The ActionScript programming language allows the development of interactive animations, video games, web applications, desktop applications and mobile applications. Programmers can implement Flash software using an IDE such as Adobe Animate, Adobe Flash Builder, Adobe Director, FlashDevelop and Powerflasher FDT. Adobe AIR enables full-featured desktop and mobile applications to be developed with Flash and published for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Wii U and Switch.

Although Flash was previously a dominant platform for online multimedia content, it is slowly being abandoned as Adobe favors a transition to HTML5. Flash Player has been deprecated and has an official end-of-life by 2020.[1] However, Adobe will continue to develop Adobe AIR, a technology for building applications and games with Flash.[2]OpenFL, an open-source implementation of the Flash Player is also actively developed.

In the early 2000s, Flash was widely installed on desktop computers, and was commonly used to display interactive web pages, online games, and to playback video and audio content.[3] In 2005, YouTube was founded by former PayPal employees, and it used Flash Player as a means to display compressed video content on the web.[3]

In 2007, YouTube offered videos in HTML5 format to support the iPhone and iPad, which did not support Flash Player.[3] After a controversy with Apple, Adobe stopped developing Flash Player for Mobile, focussing its efforts on Adobe AIR applications and HTML5 animation.[3] In 2015, Google introduced Google Swiffy to convert Flash animation to HTML5, a tool Google would use to automatically convert Flash web ads for mobile devices.[8] In 2015, YouTube switched to HTML5 technology on all devices, however it will preserve the Flash-based video player for older web browsers.[9][10][11]

After Flash 5 introduced ActionScript in 2000, developers combined the visual and programming capabilities of Flash to produce interactive experiences and applications for the Web.[12] Such Web-based applications eventually came to be known as "Rich Internet Applications" (RIAs).[12]

Between 2006 and 2016, the Speedtest.net web service conducted over 9.0 billion speed tests using an RIA built with Adobe Flash.[15][16] In 2016, the service shifted to HTML5 due to the decreasing availability of Adobe Flash Player on PCs.[17]

Adobe introduced various technologies to help build video games, including Adobe AIR (to release games for desktop or mobile platforms), Adobe Scout (to improve performance), CrossBridge (to convert C++-based games to run in Flash), and Stage3D (to support GPU-accelerated video games). 3D frameworks like Away3D and Flare3D simplified creation of 3D content for Flash.

Flash is also used to build interfaces and HUDs for 3D video games using Scaleform GFx, a technology that renders Flash content within non-Flash video games. Scaleform is supported by more than 10 major video game engines including Unreal Engine, UDK, CryEngine and PhyreEngine, and has been used to provide 3D interfaces for more than 150 major video game titles since its launch in 2003.

As the Internet became more popular, FutureWave realized the potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might challenge MacromediaShockwave technology.[18][19] In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features and released this new product as FutureSplash Animator on Macintosh and PC.[18][19][25][26]

In November 1996, FutureSplash was acquired by Macromedia, and Macromedia re-branded and released FutureSplash Animator as Macromedia Flash 1.0. Flash was a two-part system, a graphics and animation editor known as Macromedia Flash, and a player known as Macromedia Flash Player.

FutureSplash Animator was an animation tool originally developed for pen-based computing devices. Due to the small size of the FutureSplash Viewer, it was particularly suited for download on the Web. Macromedia distributed Flash Player as a free browser plugin in order to quickly gain market share. By 2005, more computers worldwide had Flash Player installed than any other Web media format, including Java, QuickTime, RealNetworks and Windows Media Player.[27]

Macromedia upgraded the Flash system between 1996 and 1999 adding MovieClips, Actions (the precursor to ActionScript), Alpha transparency, and other features. As Flash matured, Macromedia's focus shifted from marketing it as a graphics and media tool to promoting it as a Web application platform, adding scripting and data access capabilities to the player while attempting to retain its small footprint.

In 2000, the first major version of ActionScript was developed, and released with Flash 5. Actionscript 2.0 was released with Flash MX 2004 and supported object-oriented programming, improved UI components and other programming features. The last version of Flash released by Macromedia was Flash 8, which focused on graphical upgrades such as filters (blur, drop shadow, etc.), blend modes (similar to Adobe Photoshop), and advanced features for FLV video.

In 2007, Adobe's first version release was Adobe Flash CS3 Professional, the ninth major version of Flash. It introduced the ActionScript 3.0 programming language, which supported modern programming practices and enabled business applications to be developed with Flash. Adobe Flex Builder (built on Eclipse) targeted the enterprise application development market, and was also released the same year. Flex Builder included the Flex SDK, a set of components that included charting, advanced UI, and data services (Flex Data Services).

Also in 2008, Adobe released the first version of Adobe Integrated Runtime (later re-branded as Adobe AIR), a runtime engine that replaced Flash Player, and provided additional capabilities to the ActionScript 3.0 language to build desktop and mobile applications. With AIR, developers could access the file system (the user's files and folders), and connected devices suxh as joystick, gamepad and sensors for the first time.

In 2011, Adobe Flash Player 11 was released, and with it the first version of Stage3D, allowing GPU-accelerated 3D rendering for Flash applications and games on desktop platforms such as Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.[28] Adobe further improved 3D capabilities from 2011 to 2013, adding support for 3D rendering on Android and iOS platforms, alpha-channels, compressed textures, texture atlases, and other features.[29][30] Adobe AIR was upgraded to support 64-bit computers, and to allow developers to add additional functionality to the AIR runtime using AIR Native Extensions (ANE).

In 2014, Adobe AIR reached a milestone with over 100,000 unique applications built, and over 1 billion installations logged across the world (May 2014).[31][32] Adobe AIR was voted the Best Mobile Application Development product at the Consumer Electronics Show on two consecutive years (CES 2014 and CES 2015).[33][34] In 2016, Adobe renamed Flash Professional, the primary authoring software for Flash content, to Adobe Animate to reflect its growing use for authoring HTML5 content in favour of Flash content.[35]

On May 1, 2008, Adobe announced the Open Screen Project, with the intent of providing a consistent application interface across devices such as personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics.[36] When the project was announced, seven goals were outlined: the abolition of licensing fees for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Integrated Runtime, the removal of restrictions on the use of the Shockwave Flash (SWF) and Flash Video (FLV) file formats, the publishing of application programming interfaces for porting Flash to new devices, and the publishing of The Flash Cast protocol and Action Message Format (AMF), which let Flash applications receive information from remote databases.[36]

As of February 2009[update], the specifications removing the restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV/F4V specs have been published.[37] The Flash Cast protocol—now known as the Mobile Content Delivery Protocol—and AMF protocols have also been made available,[37] with AMF available as an open source implementation, BlazeDS.

The list of mobile device providers who have joined the project includes Palm, Motorola, and Nokia,[38] who, together with Adobe, have announced a $10 million Open Screen Project fund.[39] As of 2012[update], the Open Screen Project is no longer accepting new applications according to partner BSQuare. However paid licensing is still an option for device makers who want to use Adobe software.[citation needed]

Although Flash was previously a dominant platform for online multimedia content, it is slowly being abandoned as Adobe favors a transition to HTML5 due to inherent security flaws and significant resources required to maintain the platform. Apple restricted the use of Flash on iOS due to concerns that it performed poorly on its mobile devices, had negative impact on battery life, and was deemed unnecessary for online content.[40][41] As a result, it was not adopted by Apple for its smartphone and tablet devices, which also reduced its user base and encouraged wider adoption of HTML5 features such as the canvas and video elements, which can replace Flash without the need for plugins. In 2015, Adobe rebranded its Flash authoring environment as Adobe Animate to emphasize its expanded support for HTML5 authoring, and stated that it would "encourage content creators to build with new web standards" rather than using Flash.[42] In July 2017, Adobe announced that it would declare Flash to be end-of-life in 2020, and will cease support, distribution, and security updates to Flash Player.[43] After the announcement, developers have started a petition to turn Flash into an open-source project, leading to controversy.[44]

The Flash Platform will continue in the form of Adobe AIR, which Adobe will continue to develop, and OpenFL, an open-source implementation of the Flash Player.

Flash source files are in the FLA format, and contain graphics and animation, as well as embedded assets such as bitmap images, audio files and FLV video files. The Flash source file format is a proprietary format and Adobe Animate is the only available authoring tool capable of editing such files. Flash source files (.fla) may be compiled into Flash movie files (.swf) using Adobe Animate. Note that FLA files can be edited, but output (.swf) files cannot.

Flash movie files are in the SWF format, traditionally called "ShockWave Flash" movies, "Flash movies", or "Flash applications", usually have a .swf file extension, and may be used in the form of a web page plug-in, strictly "played" in a standalone Flash Player, or incorporated into a self-executing Projector movie (with the .exe extension in Microsoft Windows). Flash Video files[spec 1] have a .flv file extension and are either used from within .swf files or played through a flv-aware player, such as VLC, or QuickTime and Windows Media Player with external codecs added.

The use of vector graphics combined with program code allows Flash files to be smaller—and thus allows streams to use less bandwidth—than the corresponding bitmaps or video clips. For content in a single format (such as just text, video, or audio), other alternatives may provide better performance and consume less CPU power than the corresponding Flash movie, for example when using transparency or making large screen updates such as photographic or text fades.

In addition to a vector-rendering engine, the Flash Player includes a virtual machine called the ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM) for scripting interactivity at run-time, with video, MP3-based audio, and bitmap graphics. As of Flash Player 8, it offers two video codecs: On2 TechnologiesVP6 and Sorenson Spark, and run-time JPEG, Progressive JPEG, PNG, and GIF capability.

Flash Player 11 introduced a full 3D shader API, called Stage3D, which is fairly similar to WebGL.[45][46] Stage3D enables GPU-accelerated rendering of 3D graphics within Flash games and applications, and has been used to build Angry Birds, and a couple of other notable games.

Virtually all browser plugins for video are free of charge and cross-platform, including Adobe's offering of Flash Video, which was first introduced with Flash version 6. Flash Video has been a popular choice for websites due to the large installed user base and programmability of Flash. In 2010, Apple publicly criticized Adobe Flash, including its implementation of video playback for not taking advantage of hardware acceleration, one reason Flash is not to be found on Apple's mobile devices. Soon after Apple's criticism, Adobe demoed and released a beta version of Flash 10.1, which takes advantage of GPU hardware acceleration even on a Mac. Flash 10.2 beta, released December 2010, adds hardware acceleration for the whole video rendering pipeline.

Flash Player supports two distinct modes of video playback, and hardware accelerated video decoding may not be used for older video content. Such content causes excessive CPU usage compared to comparable content played with other players.

Software Rendered Video : Flash Player supports software rendered video since version 6. Such video supports vector animations displayed above the video content. This obligation may, depending on graphic APIs exposed by the operating system, prohibit using a video overlay, like a traditional multimedia player would use, with the consequence that color space conversion and scaling must happen in software.[52]

Hardware Accelerated Video : Flash Player supports hardware accelerated video playback since version 10.2, for H.264, F4V, and FLV video formats. Such video is displayed above all Flash content, and takes advantage of video codec chipsets installed on the user's device. Developers must specifically use the "StageVideo" technology within Flash Player in order for hardware decoding to be enabled. Flash Player internally uses technologies such as DirectX Video Acceleration and OpenGL to do so.

In tests done by Ars Technica in 2008 and 2009, Adobe Flash Player performed better on Windows than Mac OS X and Linux with the same hardware.[53][54] Performance has later improved for the latter two, on Mac OS X with Flash Player 10.1,[55] and on Linux with Flash Player 11.[56]

Flash Audio is most commonly encoded in MP3 or AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) however it can also use ADPCM, Nellymoser (Nellymoser Asao Codec) and Speex audio codecs. Flash allows sample rates of 11, 22 and 44.1 kHz. It cannot have 48 kHz audio sample rate, which is the standard TV and DVD sample rate.

On August 20, 2007, Adobe announced on its blog that with Update 3 of Flash Player 9, Flash Video will also implement some parts of the MPEG-4 international standards.[57] Specifically, Flash Player will work with video compressed in H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10), audio compressed using AAC (MPEG-4 Part 3), the F4V, MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14), M4V, M4A, 3GP and MOV multimedia container formats, 3GPPTimed Text specification (MPEG-4 Part 17), which is a standardized subtitle format and partial parsing capability for the 'ilst' atom, which is the ID3 equivalent iTunes uses to store metadata. MPEG-4 Part 2 and H.263 will not work in F4V file format. Adobe also announced that it will be gradually moving away from the FLV format to the standard ISO base media file format (MPEG-4 Part 12) owing to functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264. The final release of the Flash Player implementing some parts of MPEG-4 standards had become available in Fall 2007.[58]

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 does not have acoustic echo cancellation, unlike the VoIP offerings of Skype and Google Voice, making this and earlier versions of Flash less suitable for group calling or meetings. Flash Player 10.3 Beta incorporates acoustic echo cancellation.

ActionScript is the programming language used by Flash. It is an enhanced superset of the ECMAScript programming language, with a classical Java-style class model, rather than JavaScript's prototype model.

In October 1998, Macromedia disclosed the Flash Version 3 Specification on its website. It did this in response to many new and often semi-open formats competing with SWF, such as Xara's Flare and Sharp's Extended Vector Animation formats. Several developers quickly created a C library for producing SWF. In February 1999, MorphInk 99 was introduced, the first third-party program to create SWF files. Macromedia also hired Middlesoft to create a freely available developers' kit for the SWF file format versions 3 to 5.

Macromedia made the Flash Files specifications for versions 6 and later available only under a non-disclosure agreement, but they are widely available from various sites.

In April 2006, the Flash SWF file format specification was released with details on the then newest version format (Flash 8). Although still lacking specific information on the incorporated video compression formats (On2, Sorenson Spark, etc.), this new documentation covered all the new features offered in Flash v8 including new ActionScript commands, expressive filter controls, and so on. The file format specification document is offered only to developers who agree to a license agreement that permits them to use the specifications only to develop programs that can export to the Flash file format. The license does not allow the use of the specifications to create programs that can be used for playback of Flash files. The Flash 9 specification was made available under similar restrictions.[59]

In June 2009, Adobe launched the Open Screen Project (Adobe link), which made the SWF specification available without restrictions. Previously, developers could not use the specification for making SWF-compatible players, but only for making SWF-exporting authoring software. The specification still omits information on codecs such as Sorenson Spark, however.[60]

The Adobe Animate authoring program is primarily used to design graphics and animation and publish the same for websites, web applications, and video games. The program also offers limited support for audio and video embedding, and ActionScript scripting.

Adobe released Adobe LiveMotion, designed to create interactive animation content and export it to a variety of formats, including SWF. LiveMotion failed to gain any notable user base.[specify]

In February 2003, Macromedia purchased Presedia, which had developed a Flash authoring tool that automatically converted PowerPoint files into Flash. Macromedia subsequently released the new product as Breeze, which included many new enhancements.

The Flash 4 Linux project was an initiative to develop an open sourceLinux application as an alternative to Adobe Animate. Development plans included authoring capacity for 2D animation, and tweening, as well as outputing SWF file formats. F4L evolved into an editor that was capable of authoring 2D animation and publishing of SWF files. Flash 4 Linux was renamed UIRA. UIRA intended to combine the resources and knowledge of the F4L project and the Qflash project, both of which were Open Source applications that aimed to provide an alternative to the proprietary Adobe Flash.

Haxe is an open source, high-level object-oriented programming language geared towards web-content creation that can compile SWF files from Haxe programs. As of 2012, Haxe can build programs for Flash Player that perform faster than the same application built with the Adobe Flex SDK compiler, due to additional compiler optimizations supported in Haxe.[61][unreliable source?]

SWFTools (specifically, swfc) is an open-source ActionScript 3.0 compiler which generates SWF files from script files, which includes SVG tags.

Adobe Flash Player is the multimedia and application player originally developed by Macromedia and acquired by Adobe Systems. It plays SWF files, which can be created by Adobe Animate, Apache Flex, or a number of other Adobe Systems and 3rd party tools. It has support for a scripting language called ActionScript, which can be used to display Flash Video from an SWF file.

Scaleform GFx is a commercial alternative Flash player that features fully hardware-accelerated 2D graphics rendering using the GPU. Scaleform has high conformance with both Flash 10 ActionScript 3[62] and Flash 8 ActionScript 2. Scaleform GFx is a game development middleware solution that helps create graphical user interfaces or HUDs within 3D video games. It does not work with web browsers.

OpenFL is an open-source implementation of the Adobe Flash player and runtime. It allows developers to build a single application against the OpenFL APIs, and simultaneously target multiple platforms including Flash/AIR, HTML5, Windows, Android, Tizen, Neko, BlackBerry and webOS. OpenFL mirrors the Flash API for graphical operations. OpenFL applications are written in Haxe, a modern multi-platform programming language.

Lightspark is a free and open source SWF player that supports most of ActionScript 3.0 and has a Mozilla-compatible plug-in.[63] It will fall back on Gnash, a free SWF player supporting ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 (AVM1) code. Lightspark supports OpenGL-based rendering for 3D content. The player is also compatible with H.264 Flash videos on YouTube.

Gnash aims to create a software player and browser plugin replacement for the Adobe Flash Player. Gnash can play SWF files up to version 7, and 80% of ActionScript 2.0.[64] Gnash run on Windows, Linux and other platforms for the 32-bit, 64-bit, and other operating systems, but development has slowed significantly in recent years.

Shumway was an open source Flash Player released by Mozilla in November 2012. It was built in JavaScript and is thus compatible with modern web-browsers.[65][66][67] In early October 2013, Shumway was included by default in the Firefox nightly branch.[68] Shumway rendered Flash contents by translating contents inside Flash files to HTML5 elements, and running an ActionScript interpreter in JavaScript.[69] It supported both AVM1 and AVM2, and ActionScript versions 1, 2, and 3.[70] Development of Shumway ceased in early 2016.[71]

The latest version of Adobe Flash Player is available for three major desktop platforms, including Windows, macOS and Linux.[73] On Linux the PPAPI plug-in is available; the NPAPI version wasn't updated to new major versions for a while[74] until Adobe changed its mind on stopping support and its former plan to discontinue "in 2017".[75]

Adobe Flash Player is available in four flavors:

ActiveX-based Plug-in

NPAPI-based Plug-in

PPAPI-based Plug-in

Projector

The ActiveX version is an ActiveX control for use in Internet Explorer and any other Windows applications that supports ActiveX technology. The Plug-in versions are available for browsers supporting either NPAPI or PPAPI plug-ins on Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux. The projector version is a standalone player that can open SWF files directly.[76]

The latest version of Adobe AIR, version 18, contains Adobe Flash Player 18, and is available for Windows XP and later, as well as macOS.[80] Official support for desktop Linux distributions ceased in June 2011 with version 2.6.[81]

However, in November 2011, Adobe announced the withdrawal of support for Flash Player on mobile devices.[92] Adobe continues to support deploying Flash-based content as mobile applications via Adobe AIR.

Adobe is reaffirming its commitment to "aggressively contribute" to HTML5.[93][94] Adobe announced the end of Flash for mobile platforms or TV, instead focusing on HTML5 for browser content and Adobe AIR for the various mobile application stores[95][96][97][98] and described it as "the beginning of the end".[99] BlackBerry LTD (formerly known as RIM) announced that it would continue to develop Flash Player for the PlayBook.[100]

There is no Adobe Flash Player for iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). However, Flash content can be made to run on iOS devices in a variety of ways:

Flash content can be bundled inside an Adobe AIR app, which will then run on iOS devices. (Apple did not allow this for a while, but they relaxed those restrictions in September 2010.[101])

If the content is Flash video being served by Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, the server will translate and send the video as HTTP Dynamic Streaming or HTTP Live Streaming, both of which can be played by iOS devices.[103]

Some specialized mobile browsers manage to accommodate Flash via streaming content from the cloud directly to a user's device. Some examples are Photon Browser[104] and Puffin Web Browser.[105]

On the emerging single-board enthusiast market, as substantially popularized by the Raspberry Pi, support from Adobe is lacking. However, the open-source player Gnash has been ported and found to be useful.[119]

OpenFL is an open-source implementation of the Adobe Flash technology. It allows developers to build a single application against the OpenFL APIs, and simultaneously target multiple platforms including Flash/AIR, HTML5, Windows, Android, Tizen, Neko, BlackBerry and webOS. OpenFL mirrors the Flash API for graphical operations. OpenFL applications are written in Haxe, a modern multi-platform programming language.

HTML5 is often cited as an alternative to Adobe Flash technology usage on web pages. Adobe released a tool that converts Flash to HTML5,[121] and in June 2011, Google released an experimental tool that does the same.[122][123] In January 2015, YouTube defaulted to HTML5 players to better support more devices.[124]

CreateJS is library that while available separately was also adopted by Adobe as a replacement for Wallaby in CS6. Unlike Wallaby, which was a standalone program, the "Toolkit for CreateJS" only works as a plug-in inside Flash Professional; it generates output for the HTML5 canvas, animated with JavaScript.[126][127] Around December 2013, the toolkit was integrated directly into Flash Professional CC.[128][129]

Websites built with Adobe Flash will not function on most modern mobile devices running Google Android or iOS (iPhone, iPad). The only alternative is using HTML5 and responsive web design to build websites that support both desktop and mobile devices.

However, Flash is still used to build mobile games using Adobe AIR. Such games will not work in mobile web browsers, but must be installed via the appropriate app store.

The reliance on Adobe for decoding Flash makes its use on the World Wide Web a concern—the completeness of its public specifications are debated, and no complete implementation of Flash is publicly available in source code form with a license that permits reuse. Generally, public specifications are what makes a format re-implementable (see future proofing data storage), and reusable codebases can be ported to new platforms without the endorsement of the format creator.

Companies building websites should beware of proprietary rich-media technologies like Adobe's Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight. (...) You're producing content for your users and there's someone in the middle deciding whether users should see your content.

Representing open standards, inventor of CSS and co-author of HTML5, Håkon Wium Lie explained in a Google tech talk of 2007, entitled "the <video> element", the proposal of Theora as the format for HTML5 video:[133]

I believe very strongly, that we need to agree on some kind of baseline video format if [the video element] is going to succeed. Flash is today the baseline format on the web. The problem with Flash is that it's not an open standard.

Usability consultant Jakob Nielsen published an Alertbox in 2000 entitled, Flash: 99% Bad, stating that "Flash tends to degrade websites for three reasons: it encourages design abuse, it breaks with the Web's fundamental interaction principles, and it distracts attention from the site's core value."[135] Some problems have been at least partially fixed since Nielsen's complaints: Text size can be controlled using full page zoom and it has been possible for authors to include alternative text in Flash since Flash Player 6.

Some websites rely heavily on Flash and become unusable without Flash Player, or with Flash blocked.

Flash content is usually embedded using the object or embedHTML element.[136] A web browser that does not fully implement one of these elements displays the replacement text, if supplied by the web page. Often, a plugin is required for the browser to fully implement these elements, though some users cannot or will not install it.

Since Flash can be used to produce content (such as advertisements) that some users find obnoxious or take a large amount of bandwidth to download, some web browsers, by default, do not play Flash content until the user clicks on it, e.g. Konqueror, K-Meleon.

Most current browsers have a feature to block plugins, playing one only when the user clicks it. Opera versions since 10.5 feature native Flash blocking. Opera Turbo requires the user to click to play Flash content, and the browser also allows the user to enable this option permanently. Both Chrome[137] and Firefox[138] have an option to enable "click to play plugins". Equivalent "Flash blocker" extensions are also available for many popular browsers: Firefox has Flashblock and NoScript, Internet Explorer has Foxie, which contains a number of features, one of them named Flashblock. WebKit-based browsers under macOS, such as Apple's Safari, have ClickToFlash.[139] In June 2015, Google announced that Chrome will "pause" advertisements and "non-central" Flash content by default.[140]

Firefox (from version 46) rewrites old Flash-only YouTube embed code into YouTube's modern embedded player that is capable of using either HTML5 or Flash.[141] Such embed code is used by non-YouTube sites to embed YouTube's videos, and can still be encountered, for example, on old blogs and forums.

For many years Adobe Flash Player's security record[142] has led many security experts to recommend against installing the player, or to block Flash content.[143][144] The US-CERT has recommended blocking Flash,[145] and security researcher Charlie Miller recommended "not to install Flash";[146] however, for people still using Flash, Intego recommended that users get trusted updates "only directly from the vendor that publishes them."[147] As of February 12, 2015, Adobe Flash Player has over 400 CVE entries,[148] of which over 300 lead to arbitrary code execution, and past vulnerabilities have enabled spying via web cameras.[149][150][151][152] Security experts have long predicted the demise of Flash, saying that with the rise of HTML5 "...the need for browser plugins such as Flash is diminishing",[153] as only 7 to 10 percent of websites still use it.[154][155]

Active moves by third parties to limit the risk began with Steve Jobs in 2010 saying that Apple would not allow Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad – citing abysmal security as one reason.[156] Flash often used the ability to dynamically change parts of the runtime on languages on OSX to improve their own performance, but caused general instability. In July 2015, a series of newly discovered vulnerabilities resulted in Facebook's chief security officer, Alex Stamos, issuing a call to Adobe to discontinue the software entirely[157] and the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Google Chrome and Apple Safari to blacklist all earlier versions of Flash Player.[158][159][160][161]

As a result, "Adobe has essentially stopped trying to do anything new and innovative with Flash."[155]

Like the HTTP cookie, a flash cookie (also known as a “Local Shared Object”) can be used to save application data. Flash cookies are not shared across domains. An August 2009 study by the Ashkan Soltani and a team of researchers at UC Berkeley found that 50% of websites using Flash were also employing flash cookies, yet privacy policies rarely disclosed them, and user controls for privacy preferences were lacking.[162] Most browsers' cache and history suppress or delete functions did not affect Flash Player's writing Local Shared Objects to its own cache in version 10.2 and earlier, at which point the user community was much less aware of the existence and function of Flash cookies than HTTP cookies.[163] Thus, users with those versions, having deleted HTTP cookies and purged browser history files and caches, may believe that they have purged all tracking data from their computers when in fact Flash browsing history remains. Adobe's own Flash Website Storage Settings panel, a submenu of Adobe's Flash Settings Manager web application, and other editors and toolkits can manage settings for and delete Flash Local Shared Objects.[164]

1.
Software developer
–
A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process, including the research, design, programming, and testing of computer software. Other job titles which are used with similar meanings are programmer, software analyst. According to developer Eric Sink, the differences between system design, software development, and programming are more apparent, even more so that developers become systems architects, those who design the multi-leveled architecture or component interactions of a large software system. In a large company, there may be employees whose sole responsibility consists of one of the phases above. In smaller development environments, a few people or even an individual might handle the complete process. The word software was coined as a prank as early as 1953, before this time, computers were programmed either by customers, or the few commercial computer vendors of the time, such as UNIVAC and IBM. The first company founded to provide products and services was Computer Usage Company in 1955. The software industry expanded in the early 1960s, almost immediately after computers were first sold in mass-produced quantities, universities, government, and business customers created a demand for software. Many of these programs were written in-house by full-time staff programmers, some were distributed freely between users of a particular machine for no charge. Others were done on a basis, and other firms such as Computer Sciences Corporation started to grow. The computer/hardware makers started bundling operating systems, systems software and programming environments with their machines, new software was built for microcomputers, so other manufacturers including IBM, followed DECs example quickly, resulting in the IBM AS/400 amongst others. The industry expanded greatly with the rise of the computer in the mid-1970s. In the following years, it created a growing market for games, applications. DOS, Microsofts first operating system product, was the dominant operating system at the time, by 2014 the role of cloud developer had been defined, in this context, one definition of a developer in general was published, Developers make software for the world to use. The job of a developer is to crank out code -- fresh code for new products, code fixes for maintenance, code for business logic, bus factor Software Developer description from the US Department of Labor

2.
Adobe Systems
–
Adobe Systems Incorporated /əˈdoʊbiː/ is an American multinational computer software company. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, Adobe has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more recent foray towards rich Internet application software development. It is best known for Photoshop, an image editing software, Acrobat Reader, Adobe was founded in February 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC in order to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, as of 2015, Adobe Systems has about 13,500 employees, about 40% of whom work in San Jose. The name of the company, Adobe, comes from Adobe Creek in Los Altos, California, Adobes corporate logo features a stylized A and was designed by the wife of John Warnock, Marva Warnock, who is a graphic designer. Adobes first products after PostScript were digital fonts, which released in a proprietary format called Type 1. Apple subsequently developed a standard, TrueType, which provided full scalability and precise control of the pixel pattern created by the fonts outlines. In the mid-1980s, Adobe entered the software market with Illustrator. Illustrator, which grew from the firms in-house font-development software, helped popularize PostScript-enabled laser printers, Adobe Systems entered NASDAQ in 1986. Its revenue has grown from roughly $1 billion in 1999 to roughly $4 billion in 2012, Adobes fiscal years run from December to November. For example, the 2007 fiscal year ended on November 30,2007, in 1989, Adobe introduced what was to become its flagship product, a graphics editing program for the Macintosh called Photoshop. Stable and full-featured, Photoshop 1.0 was ably marketed by Adobe, in 1993, Adobe introduced PDF, the Portable Document Format, and its Adobe Acrobat and Reader software. PDF is now an International Standard, ISO 32000-1,2008, in December 1991, Adobe released Adobe Premiere, which Adobe rebranded as Adobe Premiere Pro in 2003. In 1992, Adobe acquired OCR Systems, Inc, in 1994, Adobe acquired Aldus and added PageMaker and After Effects to its product line later in the year, it also controls the TIFF file format. In 1995, Adobe added FrameMaker, the long-document DTP application, in 1996, Adobe Systems Inc added Ares Software Corp. In 2002, Adobe acquired Canadian company Accelio, on December 12,2005, Adobe acquired its main rival, Macromedia, in a stock swap valued at about $3. Adobe released Adobe Media Player in April 2008, on April 27, Adobe discontinued development and sales of its older HTML/web development software, GoLive in favor of Dreamweaver. Adobe offered a discount on Dreamweaver for GoLive users and supports those who still use GoLive with online tutorials, on June 1, Adobe launched Acrobat. com, a series of web applications geared for collaborative work

3.
Macromedia
–
Macromedia was an American graphics, multimedia and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3,2005, Macromedia originated in the 1992 equal merger of Authorware Inc. and MacroMind-Paracomp. Director, an interactive multimedia-authoring tool used to make presentations, animations, CD-ROMs and information kiosks, Authorware was Macromedia’s principal product in the interactive learning market. Macromedia created Shockwave, a Director-viewer plugin for web browsers, the first multimedia playback in Netscape’s browser was a Director plug-in. Macromedia licensed Suns Java Programming Language in October 1995, in 1996, Macromedia purchased Future Wave Software and the product now known as Flash. By 2002 Macromedia produced more than 20 products and had 30 offices in 13 different countries, in January 1995, Macromedia acquired Altsys Corporation after Adobe Systems announced a merger with Altsys’ business partner, the Aldus Corporation. Altsys was the developer of the vector-drawing program FreeHand, which had been licensed by Aldus for marketing, with Macromedia’s acquisition of Altsys, it received FreeHand thus expanding its product line of multimedia graphics software to include illustration and design graphics software. FreeHands vector graphics rendering engine and other components within the program would prove useful to Macromedia in the development of web products like Fireworks. Macromedia made two acquisitions in 1996, first, in March 1996, Macromedia acquired iBand Software, makers of the fledgling Backstage HTML authoring-tool and application-server. Macromedia developed a new HTML-authoring tool, Macromedia Dreamweaver, around portions of the Backstage codebase, at the time, most professional web authors preferred to code HTML by hand using text editors because they wanted full control over the source. Macromedia acquired FutureWave Software, in November,1996, makers of FutureSplash Animator, because of the small size of the FutureSplash viewer application, it was particularly suited for download over the Web, where most users, at the time, had low-bandwidth connections. Macromedia renamed Splash to Macromedia Flash, and following the lead of Netscape, as of 2005, more computers worldwide had the Flash Player installed than any other Web media format, including Java, QuickTime, RealNetworks and Windows Media Player. Macromedia continued on the merger and acquisition trail, in December 1999, later that year, Macromedia also acquired help authoring software company eHelp Corporation, whose products included RoboHelp & RoboDemo. On April 18,2005, Adobe Systems announced an agreement to acquire Macromedia in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion on the last trading-day before the announcement. The acquisition took place on December 3,2005, and Adobe integrated the operations, networks. A similar suit had been filed in July, the class-action suit was dismissed by a federal judge on May 19,1998. On August 10,2000, Adobe System Incorporated claimed that the San Francisco-based Macromedia violated two of its patents on tabbed palettes, Macromedia countered with a claim that Adobe infringed on Macromedias patents for a draw-based editor for Web pages and a hierarchical structure editor for Web sites. In July 2002, Adobe and Macromedia reached an agreement that all claims in this series of patent suits

4.
FutureWave Software
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FutureWave Software was a software development company based in San Diego, California. The company was founded by Charlie Jackson, Jonathan Gay, VP of Marketing was Michelle Welsh who also came from Silicon Beach Software, then Aldus. The companys first product was SmartSketch, a program for the PenPoint OS. When pen computing did not take off, SmartSketch was ported to the Microsoft Windows, as the Internet became more popular, FutureWave realized the potential for a vector-based web animation tool that might challenge Macromedia Shockwave technology. In 1995, FutureWave modified SmartSketch by adding frame-by-frame animation features and re-released it as FutureSplash Animator on Macintosh, by that time, the company had added a second programmer Robert Tatsumi, artist Adam Grofcsik, and PR specialist Ralph Mittman. In December 1996, FutureWave was acquired by Macromedia, who renamed the animation editor Macromedia Flash

5.
Operating system
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An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is Microsoft Windows with a market share of around 83. 3%. MacOS by Apple Inc. is in place, and the varieties of Linux is in third position. Linux distributions are dominant in the server and supercomputing sectors, other specialized classes of operating systems, such as embedded and real-time systems, exist for many applications. A single-tasking system can run one program at a time. Multi-tasking may be characterized in preemptive and co-operative types, in preemptive multitasking, the operating system slices the CPU time and dedicates a slot to each of the programs. Unix-like operating systems, e. g. Solaris, Linux, cooperative multitasking is achieved by relying on each process to provide time to the other processes in a defined manner. 16-bit versions of Microsoft Windows used cooperative multi-tasking, 32-bit versions of both Windows NT and Win9x, used preemptive multi-tasking. Single-user operating systems have no facilities to distinguish users, but may allow multiple programs to run in tandem, a distributed operating system manages a group of distinct computers and makes them appear to be a single computer. The development of networked computers that could be linked and communicate with each other gave rise to distributed computing, distributed computations are carried out on more than one machine. When computers in a work in cooperation, they form a distributed system. The technique is used both in virtualization and cloud computing management, and is common in large server warehouses, embedded operating systems are designed to be used in embedded computer systems. They are designed to operate on small machines like PDAs with less autonomy and they are able to operate with a limited number of resources. They are very compact and extremely efficient by design, Windows CE and Minix 3 are some examples of embedded operating systems. A real-time operating system is a system that guarantees to process events or data by a specific moment in time. A real-time operating system may be single- or multi-tasking, but when multitasking, early computers were built to perform a series of single tasks, like a calculator. Basic operating system features were developed in the 1950s, such as resident monitor functions that could run different programs in succession to speed up processing

6.
Web browser
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A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier that may be a web page, image, hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. Although browsers are primarily intended to use the World Wide Web, the most popular web browsers are Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Opera and Firefox. The first web browser was invented in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees the Webs continued development, and is also the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation. His browser was called WorldWideWeb and later renamed Nexus, the first commonly available web browser with a graphical user interface was Erwise. The development of Erwise was initiated by Robert Cailliau, andreesens browser sparked the internet boom of the 1990s. The introduction of Mosaic in 1993 – one of the first graphical web browsers – led to an explosion in web use, Microsoft responded with its Internet Explorer in 1995, also heavily influenced by Mosaic, initiating the industrys first browser war. Bundled with Windows, Internet Explorer gained dominance in the web browser market, Internet Explorer usage share peaked at over 95% by 2002. Opera debuted in 1996, it has never achieved widespread use and it is also available on several other embedded systems, including Nintendos Wii video game console. In 1998, Netscape launched what was to become the Mozilla Foundation in an attempt to produce a competitive browser using the open source software model, as of August 2011, Firefox has a 28% usage share. Apples Safari had its first beta release in January 2003, as of April 2011, the most recent major entrant to the browser market is Chrome, first released in September 2008. Chromes take-up has increased year by year, by doubling its usage share from 8% to 16% by August 2011. This increase seems largely to be at the expense of Internet Explorer, in December 2011, Chrome overtook Internet Explorer 8 as the most widely used web browser but still had lower usage than all versions of Internet Explorer combined. Chromes user-base continued to grow and in May 2012, Chromes usage passed the usage of all versions of Internet Explorer combined, by April 2014, Chromes usage had hit 45%. Internet Explorer was deprecated in Windows 10, with Microsoft Edge replacing it as the web browser. The ways that web browser makers fund their development costs has changed over time, the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, was a research project. In addition to being freeware, Netscape Navigator and Opera were also sold commercially, Internet Explorer, on the other hand, was bundled free with the Windows operating system, and therefore it was funded partly by the sales of Windows to computer manufacturers and direct to users. Internet Explorer also used to be available for the Mac, in this respect, IE may have contributed to Windows and Microsoft applications sales in another way, through lock-in to Microsofts browser

7.
IOS
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IOS is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the system that presently powers many of the companys mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad. It is the second most popular operating system globally after Android. IPad tablets are also the second most popular, by sales, originally unveiled in 2007 for the iPhone, iOS has been extended to support other Apple devices such as the iPod Touch and the iPad. As of January 2017, Apples App Store contains more than 2.2 million iOS applications,1 million of which are native for iPads and these mobile apps have collectively been downloaded more than 130 billion times. The iOS user interface is based upon direct manipulation, using multi-touch gestures, interface control elements consist of sliders, switches, and buttons. Internal accelerometers are used by applications to respond to shaking the device or rotating it in three dimensions. Apple has been praised for incorporating thorough accessibility functions into iOS, enabling users with vision. Major versions of iOS are released annually, the current version, iOS10, was released on September 13,2016. In iOS, there are four layers, the Core OS, Core Services, Media. In 2005, when Steve Jobs began planning the iPhone, he had a choice to either shrink the Mac, forstall was also responsible for creating a software development kit for programmers to build iPhone apps, as well as an App Store within iTunes. The operating system was unveiled with the iPhone at the Macworld Conference & Expo on January 9,2007, and released in June of that year. At the time of its unveiling in January, Steve Jobs claimed, iPhone runs OS X and runs applications, but at the time of the iPhones release. Initially, third-party native applications were not supported, Steve Jobs reasoning was that developers could build web applications through the Safari web browser that would behave like native apps on the iPhone. In October 2007, Apple announced that a native Software Development Kit was under development, on March 6,2008, Apple held a press event, announcing the iPhone SDK. The iOS App Store was opened on July 10,2008 with an initial 500 applications available.2 million in January 2017, as of March 2016,1 million apps are natively compatible with the iPad tablet computer. These apps have collectively been downloaded more than 130 billion times, App intelligence firm Sensor Tower has estimated that the App Store will reach 5 million apps by the year 2020. On September 5,2007, Apple released the iPod Touch, Apple also sold more than one million iPhones during the 2007 holiday season

8.
Android (operating system)
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Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition to devices, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars. Variants of Android are also used on notebooks, game consoles, digital cameras, beginning with the first commercial Android device in September 2008, the operating system has gone through multiple major releases, with the current version being 7.0 Nougat, released in August 2016. Android applications can be downloaded from the Google Play store, which features over 2.7 million apps as of February 2017, Android has been the best-selling OS on tablets since 2013, and runs on the vast majority of smartphones. In September 2015, Android had 1.4 billion monthly active users, Android is popular with technology companies that require a ready-made, low-cost and customizable operating system for high-tech devices. The success of Android has made it a target for patent, Android Inc. was founded in Palo Alto, California in October 2003 by Andy Rubin, Rich Miner, Nick Sears, and Chris White. Rubin described the Android project as tremendous potential in developing smarter mobile devices that are aware of its owners location. The early intentions of the company were to develop an operating system for digital cameras. Despite the past accomplishments of the founders and early employees, Android Inc. operated secretly and that same year, Rubin ran out of money. Steve Perlman, a friend of Rubin, brought him $10,000 in cash in an envelope. In July 2005, Google acquired Android Inc. for at least $50 million and its key employees, including Rubin, Miner and White, joined Google as part of the acquisition. Not much was known about Android at the time, with Rubin having only stated that they were making software for mobile phones, at Google, the team led by Rubin developed a mobile device platform powered by the Linux kernel. Google marketed the platform to handset makers and carriers on the promise of providing a flexible, upgradeable system, Google had lined up a series of hardware components and software partners and signaled to carriers that it was open to various degrees of cooperation. Speculation about Googles intention to enter the communications market continued to build through December 2006. In September 2007, InformationWeek covered an Evalueserve study reporting that Google had filed several patent applications in the area of mobile telephony, the first commercially available smartphone running Android was the HTC Dream, also known as T-Mobile G1, announced on September 23,2008. Since 2008, Android has seen numerous updates which have improved the operating system, adding new features. Each major release is named in order after a dessert or sugary treat, with the first few Android versions being called Cupcake, Donut, Eclair. In 2010, Google launched its Nexus series of devices, a lineup in which Google partnered with different device manufacturers to produce new devices and introduce new Android versions

9.
Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedded and Windows Phone, defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows 10 Mobile is an active product, unrelated to the defunct family Windows Mobile. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20,1985, Microsoft Windows came to dominate the worlds personal computer market with over 90% market share, overtaking Mac OS, which had been introduced in 1984. Apple came to see Windows as an encroachment on their innovation in GUI development as implemented on products such as the Lisa. On PCs, Windows is still the most popular operating system, however, in 2014, Microsoft admitted losing the majority of the overall operating system market to Android, because of the massive growth in sales of Android smartphones. In 2014, the number of Windows devices sold was less than 25% that of Android devices sold and this comparison however may not be fully relevant, as the two operating systems traditionally target different platforms. As of September 2016, the most recent version of Windows for PCs, tablets, smartphones, the most recent versions for server computers is Windows Server 2016. A specialized version of Windows runs on the Xbox One game console, Microsoft, the developer of Windows, has registered several trademarks each of which denote a family of Windows operating systems that target a specific sector of the computing industry. It now consists of three operating system subfamilies that are released almost at the time and share the same kernel. Windows, The operating system for personal computers, tablets. The latest version is Windows 10, the main competitor of this family is macOS by Apple Inc. for personal computers and Android for mobile devices. Windows Server, The operating system for server computers, the latest version is Windows Server 2016. Unlike its clients sibling, it has adopted a strong naming scheme, the main competitor of this family is Linux. Windows PE, A lightweight version of its Windows sibling meant to operate as an operating system, used for installing Windows on bare-metal computers. The latest version is Windows PE10.0.10586.0, Windows Embedded, Initially, Microsoft developed Windows CE as a general-purpose operating system for every device that was too resource-limited to be called a full-fledged computer. The following Windows families are no longer being developed, Windows 9x, Microsoft now caters to the consumers market with Windows NT. Windows Mobile, The predecessor to Windows Phone, it was a mobile operating system

10.
MacOS
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Within the market of desktop, laptop and home computers, and by web usage, it is the second most widely used desktop OS after Microsoft Windows. Launched in 2001 as Mac OS X, the series is the latest in the family of Macintosh operating systems, Mac OS X succeeded classic Mac OS, which was introduced in 1984, and the final release of which was Mac OS9 in 1999. An initial, early version of the system, Mac OS X Server 1.0, was released in 1999, the first desktop version, Mac OS X10.0, followed in March 2001. In 2012, Apple rebranded Mac OS X to OS X. Releases were code named after big cats from the release up until OS X10.8 Mountain Lion. Beginning in 2013 with OS X10.9 Mavericks, releases have been named after landmarks in California, in 2016, Apple rebranded OS X to macOS, adopting the nomenclature that it uses for their other operating systems, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. The latest version of macOS is macOS10.12 Sierra, macOS is based on technologies developed at NeXT between 1985 and 1997, when Apple acquired the company. The X in Mac OS X and OS X is pronounced ten, macOS shares its Unix-based core, named Darwin, and many of its frameworks with iOS, tvOS and watchOS. A heavily modified version of Mac OS X10.4 Tiger was used for the first-generation Apple TV, Apple also used to have a separate line of releases of Mac OS X designed for servers. Beginning with Mac OS X10.7 Lion, the functions were made available as a separate package on the Mac App Store. Releases of Mac OS X from 1999 to 2005 can run only on the PowerPC-based Macs from the time period, Mac OS X10.5 Leopard was released as a Universal binary, meaning the installer disc supported both Intel and PowerPC processors. In 2009, Apple released Mac OS X10.6 Snow Leopard, in 2011, Apple released Mac OS X10.7 Lion, which no longer supported 32-bit Intel processors and also did not include Rosetta. All versions of the system released since then run exclusively on 64-bit Intel CPUs, the heritage of what would become macOS had originated at NeXT, a company founded by Steve Jobs following his departure from Apple in 1985. There, the Unix-like NeXTSTEP operating system was developed, and then launched in 1989 and its graphical user interface was built on top of an object-oriented GUI toolkit using the Objective-C programming language. This led Apple to purchase NeXT in 1996, allowing NeXTSTEP, then called OPENSTEP, previous Macintosh operating systems were named using Arabic numerals, e. g. Mac OS8 and Mac OS9. The letter X in Mac OS Xs name refers to the number 10 and it is therefore correctly pronounced ten /ˈtɛn/ in this context. However, a common mispronunciation is X /ˈɛks/, consumer releases of Mac OS X included more backward compatibility. Mac OS applications could be rewritten to run natively via the Carbon API, the consumer version of Mac OS X was launched in 2001 with Mac OS X10.0. Reviews were variable, with praise for its sophisticated, glossy Aqua interface

11.
Adobe Flash Builder
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Adobe Flash Builder 4 is available in two editions, Standard and Premium. Adobe Flash Builder offers built-in code editors for MXML and ActionScript, Adobe Flash Builder includes an interactive debugger, allowing developers to step through code execution while inspecting variables and watching expressions. Flex Builder 3 added support for performance analysis, the profiling view displays statistical information about memory use in addition to function call execution time. Prior to version 4, this product was known as Flex Builder, the name change is meant to signify its connection to other products in the Adobe Flash Platform and to create a clear distinction between the open source free Flex SDK and the IDE. Macromedia targeted the application development market with its initial releases of Flex 1.0 and 1.5. The company offered the technology at a price around US$15,000 per CPU, required for deployment, the Java EE application server compiled MXML and ActionScript on-the-fly into Flash applications. Each server license included 5 licenses for the Flex Builder IDE, Adobe significantly changed the licensing model for the Flex product line with the release of Flex 2. The core Flex 2 SDK, consisting of the command-line compilers, complete Flex applications can be built and deployed with only the Flex 2 SDK, which contains no limitations or restrictions compared to the same SDK included with the Flex Builder IDE. Adobe based the new version of Flex Builder on the open source Eclipse platform, the company released two versions of Flex Builder 2, Standard and Professional. The Professional version includes the Flex Charting Components library, enterprise-oriented services remain available through Flex Data Services 2. This server component provides data synchronization, data push, publish-subscribe, unlike Flex 1.0 and 1.5, Flex Data Services is not required for the deployment of Flex applications. Coinciding with the release of Flex 2, Adobe introduced a new version of the ActionScript programming language, known as Actionscript 3, the use of ActionScript 3 and Flex 2 requires version 9 or later of the Flash Player runtime. Flash Player 9 incorporated a new and more robust virtual machine for running the new ActionScript 3, Flex was the first Macromedia product to be re-branded under the Adobe name. On April 26,2007 Adobe announced their intent to release the Flex 3 SDK under the terms of the Mozilla Public License, Adobe released the first beta of Flex 3, codenamed Moxie, in June 2007. Major enhancements include integration with the new versions of Adobes Creative Suite products, support for AIR, Adobe released Flex 4.0 on March 22,2010. The Flex 4 development environment was rebranded from Adobe Flex Builder to Adobe Flash Builder, to indicate it produces applications for Adobe Flash Player, some themes that have incorporated into Flex 4, Design in Mind, The framework has been designed for continuous collaboration between designers and developers. Accelerated Development, Be able to take application development from conception to reality quickly, horizontal Platform Improvements, Compiler performance, language enhancements, BiDirectional components, enhanced text. Full Support for Adobe Flash Player 10 and above, broadening Horizons, Finding ways to make a framework lighter, supporting more deployment runtimes, runtime MXML

12.
FlashDevelop
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FlashDevelop is an integrated development environment for development of Adobe Flash websites, web applications, desktop applications and video games. The resulting applications run in Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR, on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, the primary purpose of FlashDevelop is enabling developers to edit, compile, debug and publish a Flash ActionScript project. It supports ActionScript 2.0, ActionScript 3.0, Haxe and it has code completion, syntax highlighting, snippets and other features similar to Microsoft Visual Studio. FlashDevelop is free and open software, mostly written in C# and is built on the efficient Scintilla editor component. It is extensible with an architecture and is a. NET Framework 2.0 application only available for Microsoft Windows. As an open source project with a plugin system, users are able to improve and optimize the program. The project is funded by donations. It also has code completion and highlighting for XML, HTML, PHP, FlashDevelop was developed in 2005 by Mika Palmu and Philippe Elsass, and later, other contributors. It was created as a lightweight and free alternative to the commercial Adobe Flash Professional and Adobe Flash Builder editors, especially useful to students, hobbyists, FlashDevelop includes the basic features expected in software development IDEs

13.
Powerflasher FDT
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Powerflasher FDT is an integrated development environment built on the Eclipse platform for development of Adobe Flash-based content. FDT enables development of content such as games, rich internet applications and Adobe AIR applications, in the ActionScript 3. FDT offers project management, code editing and interactive debugging, FDT is similar in purpose and design to Adobe Flash Builder and FlashDevelop. The primary purpose of the IDE is enabling developers to edit, compile, debug, FDT uses a subscription-based licensing model and is available in multiple editions, including a free version with restricted features for hobbyists, and a low-cost version for students

14.
Flash Catalyst
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Adobe Flash Catalyst is a designers tool for creating the user interface for Rich Internet Applications. Development and sales of Adobe Flash Catalyst ended on April 23,2012, with Flash Catalyst, user interface architects can create the user interface for Adobe Flex applications using Adobe graphics software. Then developers can use the result to build the rest of the application in Flex, Flash Catalyst can import Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks, or Flash XML Graphics files keeping all their features. The converted artwork can then be used as functional UI components, after importing, users use simple WYSIWYG techniques to create and edit behaviors without writing code and create animated transitions. Flash Catalyst can also use design-time data placeholders when marking up an application, testing interactivity and these placeholders can then be replaced at production-time with final artwork. This same method can be used to create UIs to handle dynamic data without having access to the data source. Imported objects are maintained as linked files, so created in Flash Catalyst are still maintained even after the original file is edited in its originating program. Flash Catalyst is also compatible with Adobe Flash Builder, using the same project format, in addition to its primary function of being a GUI composer for Adobe Flex components, Flash Catalyst also features a basic code workspace, which consists of a subset of Adobe Flash Builders panels. Both tools being based on Eclipse, the editor, project navigator. Thus for a simple project Flash Catalyst may even be used as the software for the entire authoring/programming steps. Criticism of Creative Cloud Official website Adobe Catalyst Usergroup UK

15.
Scaleform
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Scaleform Corporation is a developer providing middleware for use in the video game industry. As a result of Autodesks acquisition of the company in March 2011, Scaleform provides APIs for direct communication between Flash content and the game engine, and pre-built integrations for popular engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine. Scaleform GFx can also be licensed for use as a standalone Flash runtime system on mobile platforms, Scaleform Video, a fully integrated video codec for Flash Video workflow support. Scaleform IME, a fully integrated Input Method Editor for Asian chat support, scaleforms official website Scaleform on MobyGames Scaleform on LinkedIn Flash in Games SIG on IGDA

16.
Adobe Flash Player
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Adobe Flash Player is freeware software for using content created on the Adobe Flash platform, including viewing multimedia, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming video and audio. Flash Player can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or on supported mobile devices, Flash Player was created by Macromedia and has been developed and distributed by Adobe Systems since Adobe acquired Macromedia. Flash Player is distributed for free and its versions are available for every major web browser. Google Chrome comes bundled with the sandboxed Adobe Flash plug-in and Windows 8, Flash Player has a wide user base, and is a common format for games, animations, and graphical user interfaces embedded in web pages. Adobe stated in 2013 that more than 400 million out of over 1 billion connected desktops update to the new version of Flash Player within six weeks of release. Flash Player runs SWF files that can be created by the Adobe Animate authoring tool, Flash Player supports vector and raster graphics, 3D graphics, an embedded scripting language called ActionScript, and streaming of video and audio. ActionScript is based on ECMAScript, and supports object-oriented code, and is similar to JavaScript, Adobe Flash Player is a runtime that executes and displays content from a provided SWF file, although it has no in-built features to modify the SWF file at runtime. It can execute software written in the ActionScript programming language enables the runtime manipulation of text, data, vector graphics, raster graphics, sound. The player can access certain connected hardware devices, including web cameras and microphones. Flash Player is used internally by the Adobe Integrated Runtime, to provide a runtime environment for desktop applications. AIR supports installable applications on Windows, Linux, macOS, and some operating systems such as iOS. Flash Player includes native support for different data formats, some of which can only be accessed through the ActionScript scripting interface. XML, Flash Player has included support for XML parsing. XML data is held in memory as an XML Document Object Model, ActionScript 3 also supports ECMAScript for XML, which allows XML data to be manipulated more easily. JSON, Flash Player 11 includes native support for importing and exporting data in the JavaScript Object Notation format, AMF, Flash Player allows application data to be stored on users computers, in the form of Local Shared Objects, the Flash equivalent to browser cookies. Flash Player can also read and write files in the Action Message Format. The SWX system stores data as standard SWF bytecode which is interpreted by Flash Player. Another open-source project, SWXml allows Flash applications to load XML files as native ActionScript objects without any client-side XML parsing, Flash Player is primarily a graphics and multimedia platform, and has supported raster graphics and vector graphics since its earliest version

17.
Adobe AIR
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The runtime supports installable applications on Windows, OS X and mobile operating systems like Android, iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS. It also originally ran on Linux, but support was discontinued as of version 2.6 in 2011, AIR applications have unrestricted access to local storage and file systems, while browser-based applications only have access to individual files selected by users. Adobe AIR internally uses the Flash Player rendering engine and ActionScript 3.0 as the programming language. HTML5 applications may run on the WebKit engine included in AIR, according to Adobe, over 100,000 unique applications were built on AIR, and over 1 billion installations of the same were logged from users across the world, as of May 2014. Adobe AIR was voted as the Best Mobile Application Development product at the Consumer Electronics Show for two consecutive years, using AIR, developers can access the full Adobe Flash functionality, including text, vector graphics, raster graphics, video, audio, camera, and microphone capability. Adobe AIR also includes features such as file system integration, native client extensions, desktop integration. AIR enables applications to work with data in different ways, including using local files, local SQLite databases, developers can access additional functionality by building AIR Native Extensions, which can access full device functionality being programmed in the native language. On desktop platforms, AIR supports, Window management – Opening multiple windows, menu bar – Adding a native menu bar to AIR windows, with sub menus and custom menu items. File management – Discovering drives, files and folders on the PC, creating and deleting files, console applications – Executing native applications with command-line arguments, and receiving feedback via standard I/O & error streams. Multithreading – Managing multiple threads, to execute ActionScript 3 code in the background without freezing the user interface, web browser – View HTML web pages with full CSS and JavaScript support within Flash applications, with the integrated WebKit-based web browser. Clipboard access – Programmatically copy or paste text, bitmaps or files into the system clipboard, drag-and-drop – Allows users to drag text, bitmaps or files into AIR applications. In 2011, the addition of Stage3D to the Flash Player allowed Flash, several third-party frameworks have been developed to build upon the functionality of Stage3D, including the Starling Framework and Away3D. These frameworks are compatible with AIR, and provide vital performance improvements to AIR apps published for mobile devices. AIR apps can be augmented in functionality with the usage of AIR Native Extensions, Native extensions may be developed by anyone using publicly available tools, some are distributed for free or even as open source, while others are sold commercially. Native extensions may be programmed in the language on each platform. AIR is a technology and AIR applications can be repackaged with few or no changes for many popular desktop. Different installation options exist for each platform, AIR applications may be published with or without the AIR runtime. Applications packaged with the AIR runtime are larger in file size, if the runtime is not embedded in the app, it must be installed separately

18.
OpenFL
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OpenFL is a free and open-source software framework and platform for the creation of multi-platform applications and video games. OpenFL is designed to mirror the Flash API. SWF files created with Adobe Flash Professional or other authoring tools may be used in OpenFL programs, notable mobile video games developed with OpenFL include the BAFTA-award-winning game Papers, Please and the PlayStation Mobile game Rymdkapsel

19.
Scaleform GFx
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Scaleform Corporation is a developer providing middleware for use in the video game industry. As a result of Autodesks acquisition of the company in March 2011, Scaleform provides APIs for direct communication between Flash content and the game engine, and pre-built integrations for popular engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine. Scaleform GFx can also be licensed for use as a standalone Flash runtime system on mobile platforms, Scaleform Video, a fully integrated video codec for Flash Video workflow support. Scaleform IME, a fully integrated Input Method Editor for Asian chat support, scaleforms official website Scaleform on MobyGames Scaleform on LinkedIn Flash in Games SIG on IGDA

20.
Lightspark
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Lightspark is a free and open-source SWF player released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3. Lightspark supports most of ActionScript 3.0 and has a Mozilla-compatible plug-in and it will fall back on Gnash, a free SWF player on ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 code. Lightspark supports OpenGL-based rendering and LLVM-based ActionScript execution and uses OpenGL shaders, the player is compatible with H.264 Flash videos on YouTube. The Lightspark player is completely portable and it has been successfully built on Ubuntu 11.04 on PowerPC, x86, ARM and AMD64 architectures. Lightspark has a Win32 branch for Microsoft Visual Studio and introduced a Mozilla-compatible plug-in for Windows in version 0.5.3, since then, the project hasnt seen any official Windows release, but newer versions are continuously built and made available through Jenkins. Changes between versions, Mozilla Shumway Willis, Nathan, official website Developers blog Lightspark at GitHub Lightspark at Launchpad Lightspark on SourceForge. net

21.
SWF
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SWF is an abbreviation for small web format, an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript. They may also occur in programs, commonly browser games, using ActionScript, although Adobe Illustrator can generate SWF format files through its export function, it cannot open or edit them. Other than using Adobe products, one can build SWFs with open-source Motion-Twin ActionScript 2 Compiler, the open-source Ming library, various other third-party programs can also produce files in this format, such as Multimedia Fusion 2, Captivate and SWiSH Max. The term SWF has originated as an abbreviation for ShockWave Flash and this usage was changed to the backronym Small Web Format to eliminate confusion with a different technology, Shockwave, from which SWF derived. Anyway, there is no resolution to the acronym SWF by Adobe. The small company FutureWave Software originally defined the file format with one primary objective, the idea involved a format which player software could run on any system and which would work with slower network connections. FutureWave released FutureSplash Animator in May 1996, in December 1996 Macromedia acquired FutureWave and FutureSplash Animator became Macromedia Flash 1.0. As Flash became more popular than Shockwave itself, this decision became more of a liability. On May 1,2008, Adobe dropped its restrictions on the SWF format specifications. However, Rob Savoye, a member of the Gnash development team, has pointed to parts of the Flash format which remain closed. On July 1,2008, Adobe released code to Google and Yahoo, the main graphical primitive in SWF is the path, which is a chain of segments of primitive types, ranging from lines to splines or bezier curves. Additional primitives like rectangles, ellipses, and even text can be built from these, the graphical elements in SWF are thus fairly similar to SVG and MPEG-4 BIFS. SWF also uses display lists and allows naming and reusing previously defined components, the binary stream format SWF uses is fairly similar to QuickTime atoms, with a tag, length and payload—an organization that makes it very easy for players to skip contents they dont support. Originally limited to presenting vector-based objects and images in a sequential manner. Adobe introduced a new, low-level 3D API in version 11 of the Flash Player, initially codenamed Molehill, the official name given to this API was ultimately Stage3D. It was intended to be an equivalent of OpenGL or Direct3D, in Stage3D shaders are expressed in a low-level language called Adobe Graphics Assembly Language. GNU has started developing a free software SWF player called Gnash under the GNU General Public License, despite being a declared high-priority GNU project, funding for Gnash was fairly limited. Another player is the LGPL-licensed Swfdec, lightspark is a continuation of Gnash supporting more recent SWF versions

22.
Flash Video
–
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files, there are two different video file formats known as Flash Video, FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the manner as they are within SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the ISO base media file format and is starting with Flash Player 9 update 3, both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by Macromedia, in the early 2000s, Flash Video used to be the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. Notable users of it include Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo, Video, metacafe, Reuters. com, and many other news providers. Flash Video FLV files usually contain material encoded with codecs following the Sorenson Spark or VP6 video compression formats, the most recent public releases of Flash Player also support H.264 video and HE-AAC audio. All of these formats are restricted by patents. Flash Video is viewable on most operating systems via the Adobe Flash Player, apples iOS devices, along with almost all other mobile devices, do not support the Flash Player plugin and so require other delivery methods such as provided by the Adobe Flash Media Server. Support for video in SWF file format was added in Flash Player 6, in 2003, Flash Player 7 added direct support for FLV file format. Because of restrictions in the FLV file format, Adobe Systems has created in 2007 new file formats listed below, Flash Player does not check the extension of the file, but rather looks inside the file to detect which format it is. The new file formats are completely different from the older FLV file format, for example, F4V does not support Screen video, Sorenson Spark, VP6 video compression formats and ADPCM, Nellymoser audio compression formats. Authors of Flash Player strongly encourage everyone to embrace the new file format F4V. There are functional limits with the FLV structure when streaming H.264 or AAC which could not be overcome without a redesign of the file format and this is one reason why Adobe Systems is moving away from the traditional FLV file structure. Initial format since 2002 is Flash Video, file suffix is. flv with a MIME derived Internet media type of video/x-flv. SWF files published for Flash Player 6 and later versions are able to exchange audio, video, one way to feed data to Flash Media Server is from files in the FLV file format. Starting with SWF files created for Flash Player 7, Flash Player can play FLV file format directly, starting with SWF files created for Flash Player 9 Update 3, Flash Player can also play the new F4V file format. Use of the H.264 and AAC compression formats in the FLV file format has some limitations, commonly, Flash Video FLV files contain video bit streams which are a proprietary variant of the H.263 video standard, under the name of Sorenson Spark

23.
Programming language
–
A programming language is a formal computer language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to programs to control the behavior of a machine or to express algorithms. From the early 1800s, programs were used to direct the behavior of such as Jacquard looms. Thousands of different programming languages have created, mainly in the computer field. Many programming languages require computation to be specified in an imperative form while other languages use forms of program specification such as the declarative form. The description of a language is usually split into the two components of syntax and semantics. Some languages are defined by a document while other languages have a dominant implementation that is treated as a reference. Some languages have both, with the language defined by a standard and extensions taken from the dominant implementation being common. A programming language is a notation for writing programs, which are specifications of a computation or algorithm, some, but not all, authors restrict the term programming language to those languages that can express all possible algorithms. For example, PostScript programs are created by another program to control a computer printer or display. More generally, a language may describe computation on some, possibly abstract. It is generally accepted that a specification for a programming language includes a description, possibly idealized. In most practical contexts, a programming language involves a computer, consequently, abstractions Programming languages usually contain abstractions for defining and manipulating data structures or controlling the flow of execution. Expressive power The theory of computation classifies languages by the computations they are capable of expressing, all Turing complete languages can implement the same set of algorithms. ANSI/ISO SQL-92 and Charity are examples of languages that are not Turing complete, markup languages like XML, HTML, or troff, which define structured data, are not usually considered programming languages. Programming languages may, however, share the syntax with markup languages if a computational semantics is defined, XSLT, for example, is a Turing complete XML dialect. Moreover, LaTeX, which is used for structuring documents. The term computer language is used interchangeably with programming language

24.
ActionScript
–
ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. It is a derivation of HyperTalk, the language for HyperCard. It is now a dialect of ECMAScript, though it originally arose as a sibling, ActionScript is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash Player platform, used on Web pages in the form of embedded SWF files. ActionScript 3 is also used with Adobe AIR system for the development of desktop, the language itself is open-source in that its specification is offered free of charge and both an open source compiler and open source virtual machine are available. ActionScript is also used with Scaleform GFx for the development of 3D video game user interfaces, ActionScript was initially designed for controlling simple 2D vector animations made in Adobe Flash. Initially focused on animation, early versions of Flash content offered few interactivity features, later versions added functionality allowing for the creation of Web-based games and rich Internet applications with streaming media. Today, ActionScript is suitable for development through Adobe AIR, use in some database applications. Flash MX2004 introduced ActionScript 2.0, a language more suited to the development of Flash applications. It is often possible to time by scripting something rather than animating it. Since the arrival of the Flash Player 9 alpha a newer version of ActionScript has been released and this version of the language is intended to be compiled and run on a version of the ActionScript Virtual Machine that has been itself completely re-written from the ground up. Because of this, code written in ActionScript 3.0 is generally targeted for Flash Player 9 and higher, at the same time, ActionScript 3.0 executes up to 10 times faster than legacy ActionScript code due to the Just-In-Time compiler enhancements. Flash libraries can be used with the XML capabilities of the browser to render content in the browser. This technology is known as Asynchronous Flash and XML, much like AJAX, Adobe offers its Flex product line to meet the demand for Rich Internet Applications built on the Flash runtime, with behaviors and programming done in ActionScript. ActionScript 3.0 forms the foundation of the Flex 2 API, ActionScript started as an object-oriented language for Macromedias Flash authoring tool, now developed by Adobe Systems as Adobe Flash. The first three versions of the Flash authoring tool provided limited interactivity features, early Flash developers could attach a simple command, called an action, to a button or a frame. The set of actions was basic navigation controls, with such as play, stop, getURL. With the release of Flash 4 in 1999, this set of actions became a small scripting language. New capabilities introduced for Flash 4 included variables, expressions, operators, if statements, although referred to internally as ActionScript, the Flash 4 user manual and marketing documents continued to use the term actions to describe this set of commands

25.
Flash animation
–
A Flash animation or Flash cartoon is an animated film that is created with the Adobe Flash platform or similar animation software and often distributed in the SWF file format. The term Flash animation refers to both the format and the medium in which the animation is produced. This allowed artists to release shorts and interactive experiences well under 1 MB, some hallmarks of poorly produced Flash animation are jerky natural movements, auto-tweened character movements, lip-sync without interpolation, and abrupt changes from front to profile view. Flash animations are typically distributed by way of the World Wide Web, in case they are often referred to as Internet cartoons, online cartoons. Web Flash animations may be interactive and are created in a series. A Flash animation is distinguished from a Webcomic, which is a comic strip distributed via the Web, Flash animation is now taught in schools throughout the UK and can be taken as a GCSE and A-level. The first prominent use of the Flash animation format was by Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, on October 15,1997, he launched The Goddamn George Liquor Program, the first cartoon series produced specifically for the Internet. The series starred George Liquor and his dim-witted nephew Jimmy The Hapless Idiot Boy, later, Kricfalusi produced more animated projects with Flash including several online shorts for Icebox. com, television commercials, and a music video. Soon after that, web cartoons began appearing on the Internet with more regularity, the series originally launched in the spring of 1997 as a web comic with limited animation and sound. After gaining online syndication partners including Lycos. com and WebTV, following her Showtime debut, the titular heroine appeared in over 50 Flash webisodes on the Showtime website and starred in a million-dollar multimedia Showtime marketing campaign. The Von Ghouls went live in November 1999, featuring the first music group with cartoon episodes online including original songs, in the vein of Saturday morning cartoons of the 1970s. A number of portal sites featured Flash animation during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, including Newgrounds, Icebox, MondoMedia, CampChaos, MediaTrip, Bogbeast. Stan Lee of Marvel Comics launched a comics site. The Internet also saw the proliferation of many adult-only Flash cartoon sites, some of the shows from that period made the transition to traditional media, including Queer Duck, Gary the Rat, Happy Tree Friends, and the politically minded JibJab shorts. Occasionally, the trend has reversed, after being canceled from both ABC and Fox, Atom Films and Flinch Studio created net-only episodes of The Critic in 2000–2001. In another instance, Flash almost made the transition to the big screen, in 2001, production began on what would have been the first Flash-animated feature film, the ill-fated Lil Pimp, which also began life as an Internet series. As potentially controversial as its subject matter was, it had a large budget, a number of well-known actors, a full crew. Although Sony Pictures decided not to release the film, it was released on DVD by Lions Gate

26.
Browser game
–
An online game is a video game that is either partially or primarily played through the Internet or another computer network. The design of games can range from simple text-based environments to the incorporation of complex graphics. The prominence of online components within a game can range from being minor features, such as an online leaderboard, to being part of core gameplay, many online games create their own online communities, while other games, especially social games, integrate the players existing real-life communities. Online game culture sometimes faces criticisms for an environment that might promote cyberbullying, violence, some gamers are also concerned about gaming addiction or social stigma. Online games have attracted players from a variety of ages, nationalities, Online game content can also be studied in scientific field, especially gamers interactions within virtual societies in relation to the behavior and social phenomena of everyday life. Video game consoles began to receive online networking features, such as the Famicom Modem, Sega Meganet, Satellaview, SegaNet, PlayStation 2. Following improvements in connection speeds, more recent developments include the popularization of new genres, such as social games, the assumption that online games in general are populated mostly by male has remained somewhat accurate for years. Recent statistics begin to diminish the male domination myth in gaming culture, although a worldwide number of male online gamers still dominates over female, women even accounted for more than half portion of the population in certain games, including PC games. The report Online Game Market Forecasts estimates worldwide revenue from online games to reach $35 billion by 2017, during the 1990s, online games started to move from a wide variety of LAN protocols and onto the Internet using the TCP/IP protocol. Doom popularized the concept of deathmatch, where players battle each other head-to-head. Since Doom, many first-person shooter games contain online components to allow deathmatch or arena style play, and by popularity, first person shooter games are becoming more and more widespread around the world. The kind of games that are played at the popular competitions are Counter-Strike, Halo, Call of Duty, Advanced Warfare, Quake Live. Competitions have a range of winnings from money to hardware, early real-time strategy games often allowed multiplayer play over a modem or local network. As the Internet started to grow during the 1990s, software was developed that would allow players to tunnel the LAN protocols used by the games over the Internet. By the late 1990s, most RTS games had native Internet support, popular RTS games with online communities have included Age of Empires, Sins of a Solar Empire, StarCraft and Warhammer 40,000, Dawn of War. Expansion of hero shooters, a subgenre of games, happened in 2016 when several developers released or announced their hero shooter multiplayer online game. Many different styles of massively multiplayer games are available, such as, initially the console only used a feature called system link, where players could connect two consoles using an Ethernet cable, or multiple consoles through a router. With the original Xbox Microsoft launched Xbox Live, allowing shared play over the internet, a similar feature exists on the PlayStation 3 in the form of the PlayStation Network, and the Wii also supports a limited amount of online gaming

27.
Application software
–
An application program is a computer program designed to perform a group of coordinated functions, tasks, or activities for the benefit of the user. Examples of an application include a processor, a spreadsheet, an accounting application, a web browser, a media player, an aeronautical flight simulator. The collective noun application software refers to all applications collectively and this contrasts with system software, which is mainly involved with running the computer. Applications may be bundled with the computer and its software or published separately. Apps built for mobile platforms are called mobile apps, in information technology, an application is a computer program designed to help people perform an activity. An application thus differs from a system, a utility. Depending on the activity for which it was designed, an application can manipulate text, numbers, graphics, some application packages focus on a single task, such as word processing, others, called integrated software include several applications. User-written software tailors systems to meet the specific needs. User-written software includes templates, word processor macros, scientific simulations, graphics. Even email filters are a kind of user software, users create this software themselves and often overlook how important it is. The delineation between system software such as operating systems and application software is not exact, however, and is occasionally the object of controversy. As another example, the GNU/Linux naming controversy is, in part, the above definitions may exclude some applications that may exist on some computers in large organizations. For an alternative definition of an app, see Application Portfolio Management, the word application, once used as an adjective, is not restricted to the of or pertaining to application software meaning. Sometimes a new and popular application arises which only runs on one platform and this is called a killer application or killer app. There are many different ways to divide up different types of application software, web apps have indeed greatly increased in popularity for some uses, but the advantages of applications make them unlikely to disappear soon, if ever. Furthermore, the two can be complementary, and even integrated, Application software can also be seen as being either horizontal or vertical. Horizontal applications are more popular and widespread, because they are general purpose, vertical applications are niche products, designed for a particular type of industry or business, or department within an organization. Integrated suites of software will try to handle every aspect possible of, for example, manufacturing or banking systems, or accounting

28.
Mobile application
–
A mobile application software or mobile app is an application software designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Some pre-installed apps can be removed by an ordinary uninstall process, where the software does not allow this, some devices can be rooted to eliminate the undesired apps. Native mobile apps often stand in contrast to desktop applications that run on desktop computers, Apps that are not preinstalled are usually available through distribution platforms called app stores. They began appearing in 2008 and are operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store. Some apps are free, while others must be bought, usually, they are downloaded from the platform to a target device, but sometimes they can be downloaded to laptops or desktop computers. For apps with a price, generally a percentage, 20-30%, goes to the provider. The same app can therefore cost a different price depending on the mobile platform, the term app is a shortening of the term application software. It has become popular, and in 2010 was listed as Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. In 2009, technology columnist David Pogue said that newer smartphones could be nicknamed app phones to distinguish them from earlier less-sophisticated smartphones, Mobile apps were originally offered for general productivity and information retrieval, including email, calendar, contacts, stock market and weather information. However, public demand and the availability of developer tools drove rapid expansion into other categories, in 2014 government regulatory agencies began trying to regulate and curate apps, particularly medical apps. Some companies offer apps as a method to deliver content with certain advantages over an official website. Usage of mobile apps has become increasingly prevalent across mobile phone users, a May 2012 comScore study reported that during the previous quarter, more mobile subscribers used apps than browsed the web on their devices,51. 1% vs.49. 8% respectively. Researchers found that usage of mobile apps strongly correlates with user context and depends on users location, Mobile apps are playing an ever-increasing role within healthcare and when designed and integrated correctly can yield many benefits. Market research firm Gartner predicted that 102 billion apps would be downloaded in 2013, by Q22015, the Google Play and Apple stores alone generated $5 billion. Developing apps for mobile devices requires considering the constraints and features of these devices, Mobile devices run on battery and have less powerful processors than personal computers and also have more features such as location detection and cameras. Developers also have to consider an array of screen sizes, hardware specifications and configurations because of intense competition in mobile software. Mobile application development requires use of specialized integrated development environments, Mobile apps are first tested within the development environment using emulators and later subjected to field testing. Emulators provide a way to test applications on mobile phones to which developers may not have physical access

29.
Mobile game
–
A mobile game is a video game played on a feature phone, smartphone, smartwatch, PDA, tablet computer, portable media player or calculator. The earliest known game on a phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994. In 1997, Nokia launched the very successful Snake, Snake, that was preinstalled in most mobile devices manufactured by Nokia, has since become one of the most played video games and is found on more than 350 million devices worldwide. A variant of the Snake game for the Nokia 6110, using the port, was also the first two-player game for mobile phones. However, mobile games distributed by mobile operators and third party portals remained a form of gaming until Apples iOS App Store was launched in 2008. As a result of explosion, technological advancement by handset manufacturers became rapid. Preloaded games on mobile phones were usually limited to crude monochrome dot matrix graphics. Commands would be input via the devices keypad buttons, with the advent of feature phones more hardware power became available even in bottom-of-the-range devices. Colour screens, multi-channel sound and most importantly the ability to download, some early companies utilized the camera phone technology for mobile games such as Namco and Panasonic. That same year Panasonic released a virtual pet game in which the pet is fed by photos of foods taken with the camera phone, in the early 2000s, mobile games gained popularity in Japans mobile phone culture, years before the United States or Europe. Older arcade-style games became popular on mobile phones, which were an ideal platform for arcade-style games designed for shorter play sessions. In the present day, Japan is the worlds largest market by revenue for mobile games, the Japanese gaming market today is becoming increasingly dominated by mobile games, which generated $5.1 billion in 2013, more than traditional console games in the country. The N-Gage brand was retained for a few years as a service included on Nokias general-purpose phones. In Europe, downloadable games were introduced by the “Les Games” portal from Orange France, run by In-fusio. Whereas before mobile games were commissioned directly by handset manufacturers. The launch of Apples App Store in 2008 radically changed the market, the Apple users, however, can only use the Apple App Store, since Apple forbids the distribution of apps via any other distribution channel. Thirdly, the integration of the App Store with the device itself led many consumers to try out apps. Consequently, the number of highly successful mobile games proliferated soon after the launch of the App Store

30.
Multimedia
–
Multimedia is content that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, video and interactive content. Multimedia contrasts with media that use only rudimentary computer displays such as text-only or traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material, Multimedia devices are electronic media devices used to store and experience multimedia content. Multimedia is distinguished from mixed media in art, for example. The term rich media is synonymous with interactive multimedia, the term multimedia was coined by singer and artist Bob Goldstein to promote the July 1966 opening of his LightWorks at LOursin show at Southampton, Long Island. Goldstein was perhaps aware of an American artist named Dick Higgins, two years later, in 1968, the term multimedia was re-appropriated to describe the work of a political consultant, David Sawyer, the husband of Iris Sawyer—one of Goldsteins producers at LOursin. In the intervening forty years, the word has taken on different meanings, in the late 1970s, the term referred to presentations consisting of multi-projector slide shows timed to an audio track. However, by the 1990s multimedia took on its current meaning, in the 1993 first edition of Multimedia, Making It Work, Tay Vaughan declared Multimedia is any combination of text, graphic art, sound, animation, and video that is delivered by computer. When you allow the user – the viewer of the project – to control what, when you provide a structure of linked elements through which the user can navigate, interactive multimedia becomes hypermedia. The German language society Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache recognized the words significance, the institute summed up its rationale by stating has become a central word in the wonderful new media world. In common usage, multimedia refers to an electronically delivered combination of media including video, still images, audio, much of the content on the web today falls within this definition as understood by millions. That era saw also a boost in the production of educational multimedia CD-ROMs, the term video, if not used exclusively to describe motion photography, is ambiguous in multimedia terminology. Video is often used to describe the format, delivery format. Multiple forms of content are often not considered modern forms of presentation such as audio or video. Likewise, single forms of content with single methods of information processing are often called multimedia. Performing arts may also be considered multimedia considering that performers and props are multiple forms of content and media. Multimedia presentations may be viewed by person on stage, projected, transmitted, a broadcast may be a live or recorded multimedia presentation. Broadcasts and recordings can be analog or digital electronic media technology. Digital online multimedia may be downloaded or streamed, streaming multimedia may be live or on-demand

31.
Computing platform
–
Computing platform means in general sense, where any piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the system, even a web browser or other application. The term computing platform can refer to different abstraction levels, including a hardware architecture, an operating system. In total it can be said to be the stage on which programs can run. For example, an OS may be a platform that abstracts the underlying differences in hardware, platforms may also include, Hardware alone, in the case of small embedded systems. Embedded systems can access hardware directly, without an OS, this is referred to as running on bare metal, a browser in the case of web-based software. The browser itself runs on a platform, but this is not relevant to software running within the browser. An application, such as a spreadsheet or word processor, which hosts software written in a scripting language. This can be extended to writing fully-fledged applications with the Microsoft Office suite as a platform, software frameworks that provide ready-made functionality. Cloud computing and Platform as a Service, the social networking sites Twitter and facebook are also considered development platforms. A virtual machine such as the Java virtual machine, applications are compiled into a format similar to machine code, known as bytecode, which is then executed by the VM. A virtualized version of a system, including virtualized hardware, OS, software. These allow, for instance, a typical Windows program to run on what is physically a Mac, some architectures have multiple layers, with each layer acting as a platform to the one above it. In general, a component only has to be adapted to the layer immediately beneath it, however, the JVM, the layer beneath the application, does have to be built separately for each OS

32.
Flash animations
–
A Flash animation or Flash cartoon is an animated film that is created with the Adobe Flash platform or similar animation software and often distributed in the SWF file format. The term Flash animation refers to both the format and the medium in which the animation is produced. This allowed artists to release shorts and interactive experiences well under 1 MB, some hallmarks of poorly produced Flash animation are jerky natural movements, auto-tweened character movements, lip-sync without interpolation, and abrupt changes from front to profile view. Flash animations are typically distributed by way of the World Wide Web, in case they are often referred to as Internet cartoons, online cartoons. Web Flash animations may be interactive and are created in a series. A Flash animation is distinguished from a Webcomic, which is a comic strip distributed via the Web, Flash animation is now taught in schools throughout the UK and can be taken as a GCSE and A-level. The first prominent use of the Flash animation format was by Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, on October 15,1997, he launched The Goddamn George Liquor Program, the first cartoon series produced specifically for the Internet. The series starred George Liquor and his dim-witted nephew Jimmy The Hapless Idiot Boy, later, Kricfalusi produced more animated projects with Flash including several online shorts for Icebox. com, television commercials, and a music video. Soon after that, web cartoons began appearing on the Internet with more regularity, the series originally launched in the spring of 1997 as a web comic with limited animation and sound. After gaining online syndication partners including Lycos. com and WebTV, following her Showtime debut, the titular heroine appeared in over 50 Flash webisodes on the Showtime website and starred in a million-dollar multimedia Showtime marketing campaign. The Von Ghouls went live in November 1999, featuring the first music group with cartoon episodes online including original songs, in the vein of Saturday morning cartoons of the 1970s. A number of portal sites featured Flash animation during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, including Newgrounds, Icebox, MondoMedia, CampChaos, MediaTrip, Bogbeast. Stan Lee of Marvel Comics launched a comics site. The Internet also saw the proliferation of many adult-only Flash cartoon sites, some of the shows from that period made the transition to traditional media, including Queer Duck, Gary the Rat, Happy Tree Friends, and the politically minded JibJab shorts. Occasionally, the trend has reversed, after being canceled from both ABC and Fox, Atom Films and Flinch Studio created net-only episodes of The Critic in 2000–2001. In another instance, Flash almost made the transition to the big screen, in 2001, production began on what would have been the first Flash-animated feature film, the ill-fated Lil Pimp, which also began life as an Internet series. As potentially controversial as its subject matter was, it had a large budget, a number of well-known actors, a full crew. Although Sony Pictures decided not to release the film, it was released on DVD by Lions Gate

33.
Vector graphics
–
Vector graphics is the use of polygons to represent images in computer graphics. Vector graphics are based on vectors, which lead through locations called control points or nodes, one of the first uses of vector graphic displays was the US SAGE air defense system. Vector graphics systems were retired from U. S. en route air traffic control in 1999. Vector graphics were used on the TX-2 at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory by computer graphics pioneer Ivan Sutherland to run his program Sketchpad in 1963. Subsequent vector graphics systems, most of which iterated through dynamically modifiable stored lists of drawing instructions, include the IBM2250, Imlac PDS-1, storage scope displays, such as the Tektronix 4014, could display vector images but not modify them without first erasing the display. In computer typography, modern outline fonts describe printable characters by cubic or quadratic mathematical curves with control points, nevertheless, bitmap fonts are still in use. Processing outline character data in sophisticated fashion to create satisfactory bitmaps for rendering is called hinting, although the term implies suggestion, the process is deterministic, and done by executable code, essentially a special-purpose computer language. While automatic hinting is possible, results can be inferior to that done by experts, although a typical plot might easily require a few thousand paper motions, back and forth, the paper doesnt slip. In a tiny roll-fed plotter made by Alps in Japan, teeth on thin sprockets indented the paper near its edges on the first pass, some Hewlett-Packard pen plotters had two-axis pen carriers and stationery paper. However, the moving-paper H-P plotters had grit wheels which, on the first pass, indented the paper surface, present-day vector graphic files such as engineering drawings are typically printed as bitmaps, after vector-to-raster conversion. The term vector graphics is used today in the context of two-dimensional computer graphics. It is one of several modes an artist can use to create an image on a raster display, Vector graphics can be uploaded to online databases for other designers to download and manipulate, speeding up the creative process. Other modes include text, multimedia, and 3D rendering, virtually all modern 3D rendering is done using extensions of 2D vector graphics techniques. Plotters used in technical drawing still draw vectors directly to paper, the World Wide Web Consortium standard for vector graphics is Scalable Vector Graphics. The standard is complex and has been slow to be established at least in part owing to commercial interests. Many web browsers now have support for rendering SVG data. In recent years, SVG has become a significant format that is independent of the resolution of the rendering device. SVG files are essentially printable text that describes both straight and curved paths, as well as other attributes, wikipedia prefers SVG for images such as simple maps, line illustrations, coats of arms, and flags, which generally are not like photographs or other continuous-tone images

34.
Raster graphics
–
Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels, the printing and prepress industries know raster graphics as contones. The opposite to contones is line work, usually implemented as vector graphics in digital systems, the word raster has its origins in the Latin rastrum, which is derived from radere. It originates from the scan of cathode ray tube video monitors. By association, it can refer to a rectangular grid of pixels. The word rastrum is now used to refer to a device for drawing musical staff lines, most modern computers have bitmapped displays, where each on-screen pixel directly corresponds to a small number of bits in memory. The screen is refreshed simply by scanning through pixels and coloring them according to set of bits. The refresh procedure, being speed critical, is implemented by dedicated circuitry. Most computer images are stored in raster graphics formats or compressed variations, including GIF, JPEG, and PNG, three-dimensional voxel raster graphics are employed in video games and are also used in medical imaging such as MRI scanners. GIS programs commonly use rasters that encode geographic data in the values as well as the pixel locations. Raster graphics are resolution dependent, meaning they cannot scale up to a resolution without loss of apparent quality. This property contrasts with the capabilities of graphics, which easily scale up to the quality of the device rendering them. Raster graphics deal more practically than vector graphics with photographs and photo-realistic images, typically, a resolution of 150 to 300 PPI works well for 4-color process printing. However, for printing technologies that perform color mixing through dithering rather than through overprinting, printer DPI and image PPI have a different meaning. Thus, for instance, printing an image at 250 PPI may actually require a printer setting of 1200 DPI, when an image is rendered in a raster-based image editor, the image is composed of millions of pixels. At its core, an image editor works by manipulating each individual pixel. Most pixel-based image editors work using the RGB color model, and this article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the relicensing terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later

35.
Digital artist
–
Digital art is an artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as an essential part of the creative or presentation process. Since the 1970s, various names have been used to describe the process including computer art and multimedia art, more generally the term digital artist is used to describe an artist who makes use of digital technologies in the production of art. In an expanded sense, digital art is a term applied to art that uses the methods of mass production or digital media. The techniques of art are used extensively by the mainstream media in advertisements. Desktop publishing has had a impact on the publishing world. Both digital and traditional artists use many sources of electronic information, digital art can be purely computer-generated or taken from other sources, such as a scanned photograph or an image drawn using vector graphics software using a mouse or graphics tablet. Andy Warhol created digital art using a Commodore Amiga where the computer was introduced at the Lincoln Center. An image of Debbie Harry was captured in monochrome from a video camera, Warhol manipulated the image adding colour by using flood fills. The simplest is 2D computer graphics which reflect how you might draw using a pencil, in this case, however, the image is on the computer screen and the instrument you draw with might be a tablet stylus or a mouse. What is generated on screen might appear to be drawn with a pencil. The second kind is 3D computer graphics, where the screen becomes a window into a virtual environment, where you arrange objects to be photographed by the computer. A possible third paradigm is to art in 2D or 3D entirely through the execution of algorithms coded into computer programs. That is, it cannot be produced without the computer, fractal art, Datamoshing, algorithmic art and real-time generative art are examples. There are many programs for doing this. Pop surrealist artist Ray Caesar works in Maya, using it to create his figures as well as the realms in which they exist. Computer-generated animations are created with a computer, from digital models created by the 3D artists or procedurally generated. The term is applied to works created entirely with a computer. Movies make heavy use of computer-generated graphics, they are called computer-generated imagery in the film industry, a number of modern films have been noted for their heavy use of photo realistic CGI

36.
Apache Flex
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Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Initially developed by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe Systems, Adobe donated Flex to the Apache Software Foundation in 2011, the Flex 3 SDK was released under the open source Mozilla Public License in 2008. The latest version of the SDK is version 4.15.0 and it is released under version 2 of the Apache License. Macromedia targeted the application development market with its initial releases of Flex 1.0 and 1.5. The company offered the technology at a price around US$15,000 per CPU, required for deployment, the Java EE application server compiled MXML and ActionScript on-the-fly into Flash applications. Each server license included 5 licenses for the Flex Builder IDE, Adobe significantly changed the licensing model for the Flex product line with the release of Flex 2. The core Flex 2 SDK, consisting of the command-line compilers, complete Flex applications can be built and deployed with only the Flex 2 SDK, which contains no limitations or restrictions compared to the same SDK included with the Flex Builder IDE. Adobe based the new version of Flex Builder on the open source Eclipse platform, the company released two versions of Flex Builder 2, Standard and Professional. The Professional version includes the Flex Charting Components library, enterprise-oriented services remain available through Flex Data Services 2. This server component provides data synchronization, data push, publish-subscribe, unlike Flex 1.0 and 1.5, Flex Data Services is not required for the deployment of Flex applications. Coinciding with the release of Flex 2, Adobe introduced a new version of the ActionScript programming language, known as Actionscript 3, the use of ActionScript 3 and Flex 2 requires version 9 or later of the Flash Player runtime. Flash Player 9 incorporated a new and more robust virtual machine for running the new ActionScript 3, Flex was the first Macromedia product to be re-branded under the Adobe name. On April 26,2007 Adobe announced their intent to release the Flex 3 SDK under the terms of the Mozilla Public License, Adobe released the first beta of Flex 3, codenamed Moxie, in June 2007. Major enhancements include integration with the new versions of Adobes Creative Suite products, support for AIR, Adobe released Flex 4.0 on March 22,2010. The Flex 4 development environment is called Adobe Flash Builder, formerly known as Adobe Flex Builder, accelerated Development, Be able to take application development from conception to reality quickly. Horizontal Platform Improvements, Compiler performance, language enhancements, BiDirectional components, full Support for Adobe Flash Player 10 and above. Broadening Horizons, Finding ways to make a lighter, supporting more deployment runtimes. Simpler skinning than the previous versions, an update to Flash Builder 4.5 and Flex 4.5 adds support for building Flex applications for BlackBerry Tablet OS and Apple iOS

37.
Mobile app
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A mobile application software or mobile app is an application software designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Some pre-installed apps can be removed by an ordinary uninstall process, where the software does not allow this, some devices can be rooted to eliminate the undesired apps. Native mobile apps often stand in contrast to desktop applications that run on desktop computers, Apps that are not preinstalled are usually available through distribution platforms called app stores. They began appearing in 2008 and are operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store. Some apps are free, while others must be bought, usually, they are downloaded from the platform to a target device, but sometimes they can be downloaded to laptops or desktop computers. For apps with a price, generally a percentage, 20-30%, goes to the provider. The same app can therefore cost a different price depending on the mobile platform, the term app is a shortening of the term application software. It has become popular, and in 2010 was listed as Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. In 2009, technology columnist David Pogue said that newer smartphones could be nicknamed app phones to distinguish them from earlier less-sophisticated smartphones, Mobile apps were originally offered for general productivity and information retrieval, including email, calendar, contacts, stock market and weather information. However, public demand and the availability of developer tools drove rapid expansion into other categories, in 2014 government regulatory agencies began trying to regulate and curate apps, particularly medical apps. Some companies offer apps as a method to deliver content with certain advantages over an official website. Usage of mobile apps has become increasingly prevalent across mobile phone users, a May 2012 comScore study reported that during the previous quarter, more mobile subscribers used apps than browsed the web on their devices,51. 1% vs.49. 8% respectively. Researchers found that usage of mobile apps strongly correlates with user context and depends on users location, Mobile apps are playing an ever-increasing role within healthcare and when designed and integrated correctly can yield many benefits. Market research firm Gartner predicted that 102 billion apps would be downloaded in 2013, by Q22015, the Google Play and Apple stores alone generated $5 billion. Developing apps for mobile devices requires considering the constraints and features of these devices, Mobile devices run on battery and have less powerful processors than personal computers and also have more features such as location detection and cameras. Developers also have to consider an array of screen sizes, hardware specifications and configurations because of intense competition in mobile software. Mobile application development requires use of specialized integrated development environments, Mobile apps are first tested within the development environment using emulators and later subjected to field testing. Emulators provide a way to test applications on mobile phones to which developers may not have physical access

38.
Linux
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Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open-source software development and distribution. The defining component of Linux is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17,1991 by Linus Torvalds, the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to describe the operating system, which has led to some controversy. Linux was originally developed for computers based on the Intel x86 architecture. Because of the dominance of Android on smartphones, Linux has the largest installed base of all operating systems. Linux is also the operating system on servers and other big iron systems such as mainframe computers. It is used by around 2. 3% of desktop computers, the Chromebook, which runs on Chrome OS, dominates the US K–12 education market and represents nearly 20% of the sub-$300 notebook sales in the US. Linux also runs on embedded systems – devices whose operating system is built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes TiVo and similar DVR devices, network routers, facility automation controls, televisions, many smartphones and tablet computers run Android and other Linux derivatives. The development of Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free, the underlying source code may be used, modified and distributed‍—‌commercially or non-commercially‍—‌by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the GNU General Public License. Typically, Linux is packaged in a known as a Linux distribution for both desktop and server use. Distributions intended to run on servers may omit all graphical environments from the standard install, because Linux is freely redistributable, anyone may create a distribution for any intended use. The Unix operating system was conceived and implemented in 1969 at AT&Ts Bell Laboratories in the United States by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, first released in 1971, Unix was written entirely in assembly language, as was common practice at the time. Later, in a key pioneering approach in 1973, it was rewritten in the C programming language by Dennis Ritchie, the availability of a high-level language implementation of Unix made its porting to different computer platforms easier. Due to an earlier antitrust case forbidding it from entering the computer business, as a result, Unix grew quickly and became widely adopted by academic institutions and businesses. In 1984, AT&T divested itself of Bell Labs, freed of the legal obligation requiring free licensing, the GNU Project, started in 1983 by Richard Stallman, has the goal of creating a complete Unix-compatible software system composed entirely of free software. Later, in 1985, Stallman started the Free Software Foundation, by the early 1990s, many of the programs required in an operating system were completed, although low-level elements such as device drivers, daemons, and the kernel were stalled and incomplete. Linus Torvalds has stated that if the GNU kernel had been available at the time, although not released until 1992 due to legal complications, development of 386BSD, from which NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD descended, predated that of Linux. Torvalds has also stated that if 386BSD had been available at the time, although the complete source code of MINIX was freely available, the licensing terms prevented it from being free software until the licensing changed in April 2000

39.
Adobe Flash Lite
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Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application published by Adobe Systems for viewing Flash content. Flash Lite operates on devices that Flash Player cannot, such as phones and other portable electronic devices like Wii, Chumby. Flash Lite allows users of devices to view multimedia content and applications developed using Adobes Flash tools. As of 2014, Flash Lite has been superseded by Adobe AIR as the development platform for mobile Flash content. Flash Lite is a development technology implemented at the client-side, or user interface layer, recent changes to ActionScript allow Flash Lite to better integrate with and even compete with device-layer technologies like Java ME and BREW. Some features available in Flash are not available in Flash Lite, Flash Lite 1.1 supports Flash 4 ActionScript. Flash Lite 2.0, based on Flash Player 7, both Flash Lite 1.1 and 2.0 also support the World Wide Web Consortiums Standard SVG Tiny, a mobile profile of the consortiums Scalable Vector Graphics recommendation. Unlike SVG, Flash Lite can add audio and interactive elements without the use of technologies such as JavaScript. As with Flash, Flash Lite is able to read and redraw external XML content, Flash Lite 3 is based on Flash 8, which lessens the gap between mobile and desktop content by supporting H.264 video standard, as well as On2 VP6 and Sorenson video codecs. Flash Lite 3 also introduces support for FLV video content, Flash Lite 4.0 supports ActionScript 3 and is a browser plugin, rather than a standalone player. It further extends the Flash Lites features with support, an advanced text rendering engine. In 2005 Adobe Systems completed its acquisition of Macromedia, the developers of Flash. At that time, Flash Lite had been available to users in Japan. NTT DoCoMo was the first carriers to adopt Flash Lite in May 2003, as a promotion for Flash Lite in February 2005, Macromedia conducted its first Mobile Flash Content Contest. In May 2006, the iriver U10 was released, which supported Flash Lite content in a landscape page orientation, the U10 was the first digital audio player to support Flash Lite. In 2005, almost 100% of Flash Lite enabled devices were found in Japan, in February 2007, Adobe claimed that over 70% of Flash Lite devices were shipped outside Japan. In October 2006, Verizon Wireless announced support for Flash Lite, Flash Lite was initially available on four handset models as a BREW extension. This allows users to download Flash Lite applications from Verizons Get It Now service, in February 2007, Adobe announced at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona that the next release of Flash Lite would support video, including streaming video

40.
Smartphone
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A smartphone is a mobile phone with an advanced mobile operating system that combines features of a personal computer operating system with other features useful for mobile or handheld use. Smartphones can access the Internet and can run a variety of third-party software components and they typically have a color display with a graphical user interface that covers more than 76% of the front surface. In 1999, the Japanese firm NTT DoCoMo released the first smartphones to achieve mass adoption within a country, smartphones became widespread in the late 2000s. Most of those produced from 2012 onward have high-speed mobile broadband 4G LTE, motion sensors, in the third quarter of 2012, one billion smartphones were in use worldwide. Global smartphone sales surpassed the sales figures for regular cell phones in early 2013, devices that combined telephony and computing were first conceptualized by Nikola Tesla in 1909 and Theodore Paraskevakos in 1971 and patented in 1974, and were offered for sale beginning in 1993. Paraskevakos was the first to introduce the concepts of intelligence, data processing and they were installed at Peoples Telephone Company in Leesburg, Alabama and were demonstrated to several telephone companies. The original and historic working models are still in the possession of Paraskevakos, the first mobile phone to incorporate PDA features was a prototype developed by Frank Canova in 1992 while at IBM and demonstrated that year at the COMDEX computer industry trade show. It included PDA features and other mobile applications such as maps, stock reports. A refined version was marketed to consumers in 1994 by BellSouth under the name Simon Personal Communicator, the Simon was the first commercially available device that could be properly referred to as a smartphone, although it was not called that in 1994. The term smart phone appeared in print as early as 1995, in the mid-late 1990s, many mobile phone users carried a separate dedicated PDA device, running early versions of operating systems such as Palm OS, BlackBerry OS or Windows CE/Pocket PC. These operating systems would later evolve into mobile operating systems, in March 1996, Hewlett-Packard released the OmniGo 700LX, a modified HP 200LX palmtop PC that supported a Nokia 2110 phone with ROM-based software to support it. It had a 640×200 resolution CGA compatible four-shade gray-scale LCD screen and could be used to place and receive calls and it was also 100% DOS5.0 compatible, allowing it to run thousands of existing software titles, including early versions of Windows. In August 1996, Nokia released the Nokia 9000 Communicator, a cellular phone based on the Nokia 2110 with an integrated PDA based on the PEN/GEOS3.0 operating system from Geoworks. The two components were attached by a hinge in what known as a clamshell design, with the display above. The PDA provided e-mail, calendar, address book, calculator and notebook applications, text-based Web browsing, when closed, the device could be used as a digital cellular phone. In June 1999 Qualcomm released the pdQ Smartphone, a CDMA digital PCS Smartphone with an integrated Palm PDA, subsequent landmark devices included, The Ericsson R380 by Ericsson Mobile Communications. The first device marketed as a smartphone, it combined the functions of a phone and PDA. The Kyocera 6035 introduced by Palm, Inc, combining a PDA with a mobile phone, it operated on the Verizon network, and supported limited Web browsing

41.
Adobe Director
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Adobe Director is a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia and now managed by Adobe Systems. Director is the editor on the Adobe Shockwave platform, which dominated the interactive multimedia product space during the 1990s. Hundreds of free video games were developed using Lingo, and published on websites such as Miniclip. Director publishes DCR files that are played using the Adobe Shockwave Player, in addition to compiling native executables for Microsoft Windows, Director allows users to build applications on a movie metaphor, with the user as the director of the movie. On January 27,2017, Adobe announced that it was discontinuing Director, sales of Director will cease on February 1,2017, ongoing updates and support for Adobe Shockwave on Mac devices on March 14th after the last release of the product. No information was released as to the date that Adobe plans to end ongoing updates, Director applications are authored on a timeline, similar to Adobe Flash. Director supports graphical primitives and playback controls such as players, 3D content players. Director includes a language called Lingo, and plug-in applications called Xtras. Director supports a graphical user interface framework with basic controls, and allows interaction with external files, Director has been used to create applications, 2D and 3D video games, self-running kiosks, and CDs and DVD launchers. Director supports many different image, audio, and video formats, Director includes a scripting language called Lingo, and a suite of 2D image manipulation tools, referred to as imaging Lingo. This subset of Lingo allows authors to perform advanced operations such as to bitblit and these advanced projects typically use only 1 frame on the score timeline using Lingo to control animation and interaction. Director 8.5 added the ability to import, manipulate, the 3D features were quite advanced for the time, unusual for an authoring environment. The 3D capability includes the ability to create geometry on the fly from code, hardware accelerated model display and it also supports vector graphics and 3D interactivity through a Shockwave 3D file object. Since Version 6, Director has supported the import of Flash animation files, one of the most powerful aspects of Director is its extensibility, which is achieved through plug-in applications named Xtras. For example, there are Xtras for OS desktop manipulations and Shell control, dedicated text processing, PDF readers, with Xtras, Director can be extended to support additional media types beyond those that the stock version of the software allows. These can be created by users or purchased from third party vendors and they are created using Adobe Directors XDK, a C++ SDK. With the change in new versions of Director, Xtra developers need to modify their products to maintain ongoing support, with changing industry trends, many third-party Xtra developers have discontinued products and dropped support due the cost of development without the significant return. For online distribution, Director can publish projects for embedding in websites using the Shockwave plugin, Shockwave files have a. DCR file extension

Software developer
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A software developer is a person concerned with facets of the software development process, including the research, design, programming, and testing of computer software. Other job titles which are used with similar meanings are programmer, software analyst. According to developer Eric Sink, the differences between system design, software developme

1.
Mistory software developer group

Adobe Systems
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Adobe Systems Incorporated /əˈdoʊbiː/ is an American multinational computer software company. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, Adobe has historically focused upon the creation of multimedia and creativity software products, with a more recent foray towards rich Internet application software development. It is bes

Macromedia
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Macromedia was an American graphics, multimedia and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3,2005, Macromedia originated in the 1992 equal merger of Authorware Inc. and MacroMind-Paracomp. Director, an

1.
Macromedia, Inc.

FutureWave Software
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FutureWave Software was a software development company based in San Diego, California. The company was founded by Charlie Jackson, Jonathan Gay, VP of Marketing was Michelle Welsh who also came from Silicon Beach Software, then Aldus. The companys first product was SmartSketch, a program for the PenPoint OS. When pen computing did not take off, Sma

1.
File formats

Operating system
–
An operating system is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources and provides common services for computer programs. All computer programs, excluding firmware, require a system to function. Operating systems are found on many devices that contain a computer – from cellular phones, the dominant desktop operating system is

1.
OS/360 was used on most IBM mainframe computers beginning in 1966, including computers used by the Apollo program.

3.
The first server for the World Wide Web ran on NeXTSTEP, based on BSD

Web browser
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A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier that may be a web page, image, hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. Although browsers ar

1.
Marc Andreessen, inventor of Netscape

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Usage share of web browsers according to StatCounter

3.
Some home media devices now include web browsers, like this LG Smart TV. The browser is controlled using an on-screen keyboard and LG's "Magic Motion" remote.

IOS
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IOS is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the system that presently powers many of the companys mobile devices, including the iPhone, iPad. It is the second most popular operating system globally after Android. IPad tablets are also the second most popular, by sales, originally unveiled

Android (operating system)
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Android is a mobile operating system developed by Google, based on the Linux kernel and designed primarily for touchscreen mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition to devices, Google has further developed Android TV for televisions, Android Auto for cars. Variants of Android are also used on notebooks, game consoles, digital came

3.
Android-x86 running on an ASUS EeePC netbook; Android has been unofficially ported to traditional PCs for use as a desktop operating system.

4.
Ouya, a video game console which runs Android.

Microsoft Windows
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Microsoft Windows is a metafamily of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Microsoft. It consists of families of operating systems, each of which cater to a certain sector of the computing industry with the OS typically associated with IBM PC compatible architecture. Active Windows families include Windows NT, Windows Embedde

1.
Screenshot of Windows 10, showing the Action Center and Start Menu

MacOS
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Within the market of desktop, laptop and home computers, and by web usage, it is the second most widely used desktop OS after Microsoft Windows. Launched in 2001 as Mac OS X, the series is the latest in the family of Macintosh operating systems, Mac OS X succeeded classic Mac OS, which was introduced in 1984, and the final release of which was Mac

FlashDevelop
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FlashDevelop is an integrated development environment for development of Adobe Flash websites, web applications, desktop applications and video games. The resulting applications run in Adobe Flash Player or Adobe AIR, on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, the primary purpose of FlashDevelop is enabling developers to edit, compile, debug and publish a Fla

1.
The code editor with Start page

Powerflasher FDT
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Powerflasher FDT is an integrated development environment built on the Eclipse platform for development of Adobe Flash-based content. FDT enables development of content such as games, rich internet applications and Adobe AIR applications, in the ActionScript 3. FDT offers project management, code editing and interactive debugging, FDT is similar in

1.
Home screen of FDT 4.5 running on Mac OS X

Flash Catalyst
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Adobe Flash Catalyst is a designers tool for creating the user interface for Rich Internet Applications. Development and sales of Adobe Flash Catalyst ended on April 23,2012, with Flash Catalyst, user interface architects can create the user interface for Adobe Flex applications using Adobe graphics software. Then developers can use the result to b

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File formats

Scaleform
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Scaleform Corporation is a developer providing middleware for use in the video game industry. As a result of Autodesks acquisition of the company in March 2011, Scaleform provides APIs for direct communication between Flash content and the game engine, and pre-built integrations for popular engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine. Scaleform GFx can

1.
Scaleform Corporation

Adobe Flash Player
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Adobe Flash Player is freeware software for using content created on the Adobe Flash platform, including viewing multimedia, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming video and audio. Flash Player can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or on supported mobile devices, Flash Player was created by Macromedia and has been developed a

1.
Software

2.
Adobe Flash Player

Adobe AIR
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The runtime supports installable applications on Windows, OS X and mobile operating systems like Android, iOS and BlackBerry Tablet OS. It also originally ran on Linux, but support was discontinued as of version 2.6 in 2011, AIR applications have unrestricted access to local storage and file systems, while browser-based applications only have acces

1.
Software

2.
File formats

OpenFL
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OpenFL is a free and open-source software framework and platform for the creation of multi-platform applications and video games. OpenFL is designed to mirror the Flash API. SWF files created with Adobe Flash Professional or other authoring tools may be used in OpenFL programs, notable mobile video games developed with OpenFL include the BAFTA-awar

1.
File formats

Scaleform GFx
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Scaleform Corporation is a developer providing middleware for use in the video game industry. As a result of Autodesks acquisition of the company in March 2011, Scaleform provides APIs for direct communication between Flash content and the game engine, and pre-built integrations for popular engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine. Scaleform GFx can

Lightspark
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Lightspark is a free and open-source SWF player released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3. Lightspark supports most of ActionScript 3.0 and has a Mozilla-compatible plug-in and it will fall back on Gnash, a free SWF player on ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 code. Lightspark supports OpenGL-based rendering and LLVM-based A

1.
Lightspark

SWF
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SWF is an abbreviation for small web format, an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript. They may also occur in programs, commonly browser games, using ActionScript, although Adobe Illustrator can generate SWF format files through its export function, it cannot open or edit them. Other than using Adobe products

1.
File formats

Flash Video
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Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files, there are two different video file formats known as Flash Video, FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the manner as t

1.
File formats

Programming language
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A programming language is a formal computer language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to programs to control the behavior of a machine or to express algorithms. From the early 1800s, programs were used to direct the behavior of such as Jacquard looms. Thousands of differen

1.
The Manchester Mark 1 ran programs written in Autocode from 1952.

2.
A selection of textbooks that teach programming, in languages both popular and obscure. These are only a few of the thousands of programming languages and dialects that have been designed in history.

ActionScript
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ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. It is a derivation of HyperTalk, the language for HyperCard. It is now a dialect of ECMAScript, though it originally arose as a sibling, ActionScript is used primarily for the development of websites and software targeting the Adobe Flash Player platform

1.
ActionScript

Flash animation
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A Flash animation or Flash cartoon is an animated film that is created with the Adobe Flash platform or similar animation software and often distributed in the SWF file format. The term Flash animation refers to both the format and the medium in which the animation is produced. This allowed artists to release shorts and interactive experiences well

1.
Simple animation in Flash MX: a square moving across the screen in a motion tween, one of the basic functions of Flash. Onion skinning is used to show the apparent motion of the square.

Browser game
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An online game is a video game that is either partially or primarily played through the Internet or another computer network. The design of games can range from simple text-based environments to the incorporation of complex graphics. The prominence of online components within a game can range from being minor features, such as an online leaderboard

Application software
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An application program is a computer program designed to perform a group of coordinated functions, tasks, or activities for the benefit of the user. Examples of an application include a processor, a spreadsheet, an accounting application, a web browser, a media player, an aeronautical flight simulator. The collective noun application software refer

1.
OpenOffice.org Writer, an open-source word processor that is a component of OpenOffice.org

Mobile application
–
A mobile application software or mobile app is an application software designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Some pre-installed apps can be removed by an ordinary uninstall process, where the software does not allow this, some devices can be rooted to eliminate the undesired apps. Native mobile apps often stand

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Developers at work

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Icons for mobile apps on a Nexus 4 smartphone

3.
Apps in Google Android OS

Mobile game
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A mobile game is a video game played on a feature phone, smartphone, smartwatch, PDA, tablet computer, portable media player or calculator. The earliest known game on a phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994. In 1997, Nokia launched the very successful Snake, Snake, that was preinstalled in most mobile devices manufactur

1.
Clone of Tetris being played on a TI-83 Plus

2.
A fan-made game similar to the game Portal.

Multimedia
–
Multimedia is content that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, video and interactive content. Multimedia contrasts with media that use only rudimentary computer displays such as text-only or traditional forms of printed or hand-produced material, Multimedia devices are electronic media devices used

Computing platform
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Computing platform means in general sense, where any piece of software is executed. It may be the hardware or the system, even a web browser or other application. The term computing platform can refer to different abstraction levels, including a hardware architecture, an operating system. In total it can be said to be the stage on which programs ca

1.
Android, a popular mobile operating system

Flash animations
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A Flash animation or Flash cartoon is an animated film that is created with the Adobe Flash platform or similar animation software and often distributed in the SWF file format. The term Flash animation refers to both the format and the medium in which the animation is produced. This allowed artists to release shorts and interactive experiences well

1.
Simple animation in Flash MX: a square moving across the screen in a motion tween, one of the basic functions of Flash. Onion skinning is used to show the apparent motion of the square.

Vector graphics
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Vector graphics is the use of polygons to represent images in computer graphics. Vector graphics are based on vectors, which lead through locations called control points or nodes, one of the first uses of vector graphic displays was the US SAGE air defense system. Vector graphics systems were retired from U. S. en route air traffic control in 1999.

1.
A free software Asteroids -like video game played on a vector monitor.

2.
Example showing effect of vector graphics versus raster graphics.

3.
Original reference photo before vectorization

Raster graphics
–
Raster images are stored in image files with varying formats. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels, the printing and prepress industries know raster graphics as contones. The opposite to contones is line work, usually implemented as vector graphics in digital systems, the word raster has its origins i

1.
The smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Zooming in further, they can be analyzed, with their colors constructed by adding the values for red, green and blue.

Digital artist
–
Digital art is an artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as an essential part of the creative or presentation process. Since the 1970s, various names have been used to describe the process including computer art and multimedia art, more generally the term digital artist is used to describe an artist who makes use of digital technolo

1.
Maurizio Bolognini, Programmed Machines (Nice, France, 1992-97). An installation at the intersection of digital art and conceptual art (computers are programmed to generate flows of random images which nobody would see).

Apache Flex
–
Apache Flex, formerly Adobe Flex, is a software development kit for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform. Initially developed by Macromedia and then acquired by Adobe Systems, Adobe donated Flex to the Apache Software Foundation in 2011, the Flex 3 SDK was released under the o

1.
Software

2.
Apache Flex

Mobile app
–
A mobile application software or mobile app is an application software designed to run on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Some pre-installed apps can be removed by an ordinary uninstall process, where the software does not allow this, some devices can be rooted to eliminate the undesired apps. Native mobile apps often stand

1.
Developers at work

2.
Icons for mobile apps on a Nexus 4 smartphone

3.
Apps in Google Android OS

Linux
–
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open-source software development and distribution. The defining component of Linux is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17,1991 by Linus Torvalds, the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to describe the operating

1.
Linus Torvalds, principal author of the Linux kernel

2.
Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution

3.
5.25-inch floppy discs holding a very early version of Linux

4.
Nexus 5 running Android

Adobe Flash Lite
–
Adobe Flash Lite is a lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application published by Adobe Systems for viewing Flash content. Flash Lite operates on devices that Flash Player cannot, such as phones and other portable electronic devices like Wii, Chumby. Flash Lite allows users of devices to view multimedia content and applications d

1.
Software

2.
File formats

Smartphone
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A smartphone is a mobile phone with an advanced mobile operating system that combines features of a personal computer operating system with other features useful for mobile or handheld use. Smartphones can access the Internet and can run a variety of third-party software components and they typically have a color display with a graphical user inter

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The first caller identification receiver (1971)

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An Apple iPhone 5S

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BlackBerry Z10 (2013)

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Samsung Galaxy Note smartphones running Android

Adobe Director
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Adobe Director is a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia and now managed by Adobe Systems. Director is the editor on the Adobe Shockwave platform, which dominated the interactive multimedia product space during the 1990s. Hundreds of free video games were developed using Lingo, and published on websites such as Miniclip.

4.
An illustration of Wii U's MCM without heat spreader. The smaller chip, lower right, is the " Espresso " CPU made by IBM. The other chips are the " Latte " GPGPU (large chip) from AMD and an EEPROM chip (tiny) from Renesas.

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Gameplay in Clash of Clans. A player is attacking another player's village. The amount of resources available for capture are on the top left. The troops available for deployment are along the bottom of the screen.